EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)
Acts 11:21-26.
Χεὶρ κυρίου] See on
Luke 1:66;
Acts 4:30. Bengel well remarks: “potentia spirituals per evangelium se exserens.”
αὐτῶν] these
preachers to the Gentiles.
Acts 11:22.
εἰς τὰ ὦτα] Comp. on
Luke 4:21.
ὁ λόγος]
the word, i.e. the narrative of it; see on
Mark 1:45.
Acts 11:23.
χάριν τ.
Θεοῦ] as it was manifested in the converted Gentiles.
τῇ προθέσει τῆς καρδ.
προσμέν.
τῷ κυρίῳ]
with the purpose of their heart to abide by the Lord, i.e. not again to abandon Christ, to whom their hearts had resolved to belong, but to be faithful to Him with this resolution. Comp.
2 Timothy 3:10.
Acts 11:24.
ὅτι ἦν …
πίστεως] contains the reason, not why Barnabas had been sent to Antioch (Kuinoel), but of the immediately preceding
ἐχάρη …
κυρίῳ.
ἀνὴρ ἀγαθός] quite generally:
an excellent man, a man of worth, whose noble character, and, moreover, whose fulness of the Spirit and of faith completely qualified him to gain and to follow the right point of view, in accordance with the divine counsel, as to the conversion of the Gentiles here beheld. Most arbitrarily Heinrichs holds that it denotes
gentleness and mildness, which Baumgarten has also assumed, although such a meaning must have arisen, as in
Matthew 20:5, from the context (comp. on
Romans 5:7), into which Baumgarten imports the idea, that Barnabas had not allowed himself to be stirred to censure by the strangeness of the new phenomenon.
Acts 11:25.
εἰς Ταρσόν] See
Acts 9:30.
Acts 11:26. According to the corrected reading
ἐγένετο δὲ αὐτοῖς καὶ ἐνιαυτὸν κ.
τ.
λ. (see the critical remarks), it is to be explained:
it happened to them (comp.
Acts 20:16;
Galatians 6:14),
to be associated even yet (
καί)
a whole year in the church, and to instruct a considerable multitude of people, and that the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. With
χρηματίσαι the construction passes into the
accusative with the infinitive, because the subject becomes different (
τοὺς μαθητ.). But it is logically correct that
χρηματίσαι κ.
τ.
λ. should still be dependent on
ἐγένετο αὐτοῖς, just because the reported appellation, which was first given to the disciples at Antioch, was causally connected with the lengthened and successful labours of the two men in that city. It was
their merit, that here the name of Christians first arose.
On the climactic
καί,
etiam, in the sense of
yet, or
yet further, comp. Hartung,
Partikell. I. p. 133 f.
συναχθῆναι]
to be brought together, i.e. to join themselves for common work. They had been since
Acts 9:26 ff. separated from each other.
χρηματίσαιto bear the name; see on
Romans 7:3.
Χριστιανούς] This name decidedly originated not in, but
outside of, the church, seeing that the Christians in the N. T. never use it of themselves, but designate themselves by
μαθηταί,
ἀδελφοί, believers, etc.; and seeing that, in the two other passages where
Χριστιανοί occurs, this appellation distinctly appears as extrinsic to the church,
Acts 26:28;
1 Peter 4:16. But it certainly did
not proceed
from the Jews, because
Χριστός was known to them as the interpretation of
מָשִׁיחַ, and they would not therefore have transferred so sacred a name to the hated apostates. Hence the origin of the name must be derived from the Gentiles in Antioch.[267] By these the name of the Head of the new religious society, “Christ,” was not regarded as an official name, which it already was among the Christians themselves ever more and more becoming; and hence they formed according to the wonted mode the
party-name: Christiani (Tac.
Ann. xv. 44: “auctor nominis ejus Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat”). At
Antioch, the seat of the mother-church of Gentile Christianity, this took place
at that time (for this follows from the reading
ἐγέν.
δὲ αὐτοῖς), because in that year the joint labours of Paul and Barnabas occasioned so considerable an enlargement of the church, and therewith naturally its increase in social and public consideration. And it was at Antioch that this name was borne
first, earlier than anywhere else (
πρῶτον, or, according to B
א,
πρώτως, Lobeck,
ad Phryn. p. 311 f.), because here the Christians, in consequence of the predominant Gentile-Christian element, asserted themselves for the first time not as a sect of Judaism, but as an independent community. There is nothing to support the view that the name was at first a
title of ridicule (de Wette, Baumgarten, after Wetstein and older interpreters). The conjecture of Baur, that the origin of the name was referred to Antioch, because that was the first Gentile city in which there were Christians (Zeller also mistrusts the account before us), cannot be justified by the Latin form of the word (see “Wetstein,
adMatthew 22:17).
[267] Ewald, p. 441 f., conjectures that it proceeded from the Roman authorities.
Acts 11:21.
χεὶρ Κ.,
cf.Acts 4:28;
Acts 4:30,
Acts 13:11,
Luke 1:66; frequent in O.T.
τε closely connects the two clauses, showing that the result of “the hand of the Lord” was that a great number, etc. (Weiss).
21.
And the hand of the Lord was with them] The expression is a common one in the O. T. to express the direct interposition of God in the affairs of the world. Cp.
Exodus 14:31, “And Israel saw that great work [Heb.
hand] which the Lord did upon the Egyptians.” So the Egyptian magicians (
Exodus 8:19), “This is the finger of God.”
Acts 11:21.
Χεὶρ Κυρίου,
the hand of the Lord) His spiritual power, putting itself forth by the Gospel. So
the arm of the Lord,
John 12:38.
Verse 21.- That believed turned for
believed and turned, A.V. and T.R.
The hand of the Lord;
i.e. his power working with them and through them. Compare the frequent phrase in the Old Testament, "with a mighty hand and a stretched out arm" (see too
Acts 4:30;
Luke 1:66). Acts 11:21
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