{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"ACT","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Acts","commonName":"Acts","introduction":"THIS book is to the Gospels what the fruit is to the tree that bears it. In the Gospels we see the corn of wheat falling into the ground and dying: in the Acts we see it bringing forth much fruit (Joh 12:24). There we see Christ purchasing the Church with His own blood: here we see the Church, so purchased, rising into actual existence; first among the Jews of Palestine, and next among the surrounding Gentiles, until it gains a footing in the great capital of the ancient world--sweeping majestically from Jerusalem to Rome. Nor is this book of less value as an Introduction to the Epistles which follow it, than as a Sequel to the Gospels which precede it. For without this history the Epistles of the New Testament--presupposing, as they do, the historical circumstances of the parties addressed, and deriving from these so much of their freshness, point, and force--would in no respect be what they now are, and would in a number of places be scarcely intelligible.\n\nThe genuineness, authenticity, and canonical authority of this book were never called in question within the ancient Church. It stands immediately after the Gospels, in the catalogues of the Homologoumena, or universally acknowledged books of the New Testament (see Introduction to our larger Commentary, Vol. V, pp. iv, v). It was rejected, indeed, by certain heretical sects in the second and third centuries--by the Ebionites, the Severians (see EUSEBIUS, Ecclesiastical History, 4.29), the Marcionites, and the Manicheans: but the totally uncritical character of their objections (see Introduction above referred to, pp. xiii, xiv) not only deprives them of all weight, but indirectly shows on what solid grounds the Christian Church had all along proceeded in recognizing this book.\n\nIn our day, however, its authenticity has, like that of all the leading books of the New Testament, been made the subject of keen and protracted controversy. DE WETTE, while admitting Luke to be the author of the entire work, pronounces the earlier portion of it to have been drawn up from unreliable sources (New-Testament Introduction, 2a, 2C). But the Tubingen school, with BAUR at their head, have gone much farther. As their fantastic theory of the post-Joannean date of the Gospels could not pretend even to a hearing so long as the authenticity of the Acts of the Apostles remained unshaken, they contend that the earlier portion of this work can be shown to be unworthy of credit, while the latter portion is in flat contradiction to the Epistle to the Galatians--which this school regard as unassailable--and bears internal evidence of being a designed distortion of facts for the purpose of setting up the catholic form which Paul gave to Christianity in opposition to the narrow Judaic but original form of it which Peter preached, and which after the death of the apostles was held exclusively by the sect of the Ebionites. It is painful to think that anyone should have spent so many years, and, aided by learned and acute disciples in different parts of the argument, should have expended so much learning, research, and ingenuity in attempting to build up a hypothesis regarding the origination of the leading books of the New Testament which outrages all the principles of sober criticism and legitimate evidence. As a school, this party at length broke up: its head, after living to find himself the sole defender of the theory as a whole, left this earthly scene complaining of desertion. While some of his associates have abandoned such heartless studies altogether for the more congenial pursuits of philosophy, others have modified their attacks on the historical truth of the New Testament records, retreating into positions into which it is not worth while to follow them, while others still have been gradually approximating to sound principles. The one compensation for all this mischief is the rich additions to the apologetical and critical literature of the books of the New Testament, and the earliest history of the Christian Church, which it has drawn from the pens of THIERSCH, EBRARD, and many others. Any allusions which it may be necessary for us to make to the assertions of this school will be made in connection with the passages to which they relate--in Acts, First Corinthians, and Galatians.\n\nThe manifest connection between this book and the third Gospel--of which it professes to be simply the continuation by the same author--and the striking similarity which marks the style of both productions, leave no room to doubt that the early Church was right in ascribing it with one consent to Luke. The difficulty which some fastidious critics have made about the sources of the earlier portion of the history has no solid ground. That the historian himself was an eye-witness of the earliest scenes--as HUG concludes from the circumstantiality of the narrative--is altogether improbable: but there were hundreds of eye-witnesses of some of the scenes, and enough of all the rest, to give to the historian, partly by oral, partly by written testimony, all the details which he has embodied so graphically in his history; and it will appear, we trust, from the commentary, that De Wette's complaints of confusion, contradiction, and error in this portion are without foundation. The same critic, and one or two others, would ascribe to Timothy those later portions of the book in which the historian speaks in the first person plural--\"we\"; supposing him to have taken notes of all that passed under his own eye, which Luke embodied in his history just as they stood. It is impossible here to refute this gratuitous hypothesis in detail; but the reader will find it done by EBRARD (The Gospel History, sect. 110, Clark's translation; sect. 127 of the original work, Wissenschaftliche Kritik der Evangelische Geschichte, 1850), and by DAVIDSON (Introduction to New Testament, Vol. II, pp. 9-21).\n\nThe undesigned coincidences between this History and the Apostolic Epistles have been brought out and handled, as an argument for the truth of the facts thus attested, with unrivalled felicity by PALEY in his HorÃ&brvbr PaulinÃ&brvbr, to which Mr. BIRKS has made a number of ingenious additions in his HorÃ&brvbr ApostolicÃ&brvbr. Exception has been taken to some of these by JOWETT (St. Paul's Epistles, Vol. I, pp. 108 ff.), not without a measure of reason in certain cases--for our day, at least--though even he admits that in this line of evidence the work of PALEY, taken as a whole, is unassailable.\n\nMuch has been written about the object of this history. Certainly \"the Acts of the Apostles\" are but very partially recorded. But for this title the historian is not responsible. Between the two extremes--of supposing that the work has no plan at all, and that it is constructed on an elaborate and complex plan, we shall probably be as near the truth as is necessary if we take the design to be to record the diffusion of Christianity and the rise of the Christian Church, first among the Jews of Palestine, the seat of the ancient Faith, and next among the surrounding Gentiles, with Antioch for its headquarters, until, finally, it is seen waving over imperial Rome, foretokening its universal triumph. In this view of it, there is no difficulty in accounting for the almost exclusive place which it gives to the labors of Peter in the first instance, and the all but entire disappearance from the history both of him and of the rest of the Twelve after the great apostle of the Gentiles came upon the stage--like the lesser lights on the rise of the great luminary. \n\n\n\nNext: Acts Chapter 1\n\n","order":44,"numberOfChapters":28,"sha256":"c94aad3dd7e20061c0935f668f020beecd42d660333a1ba60e42c592e5a6a94e","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":28,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/28.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":28},"totalNumberOfVerses":775},"chapter":{"number":11,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["they . . . of the circumcision--not the Jewish Christians generally, for here there were no other, but such as, from their jealousy for \"the middle wall of partition\" which circumcision raised between Jew and Gentile, were afterwards known as \"they of the circumcision.\" They doubtless embraced apostles as well as others.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["Thou wentest in . . . But Peter rehearsed the matter, &c.--These objectors scruple not to demand from Peter, though the first among the apostles, an explanation of his conduct; nor is there any insinuation on Peter's part of disrespect towards his authority in that demand--a manifest proof that such authority was unknown both to the complainers and to himself.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["we entered the man's house--No mention of Cornelius' name, much less of his high position, as if that affected the question. To the charge, \"Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised,\" he simply speaks of the uncircumcised \"man\" to whom he had been divinely sent.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["seen an angel--literally, \"the angel,\" for the rumor took that definite shape.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["Who shall tell thee words whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved--The historian makes the angel express this much more generally (Act 10:6). So also the subsequent report of it by the deputies and by Cornelius himself to Peter (Act 10:22, Act 10:32). But as Peter tarried with Cornelius certain days, and they doubtless talked over the wonderful scene together, perhaps this fuller and richer form of what the angel said was given to Peter; or the apostle himself may have expressed what the angel certainly designed by directing them to send for him. Observe, \"salvation\" is here made to hang upon \"words,\" that is, the Gospel message concerning Christ. But on the \"salvation\" of Cornelius, see on Act 10:34-35. On that of his \"house,\" see on Luk 19:10.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["Then remembered I the word . . . John . . . baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost. Forasmuch then, &c.--that is, \"Since God Himself has put them on a level with ourselves, by bestowing on them what the Lord Jesus pronounced the higher baptism of the Holy Ghost, would it not have been to withstand God if I had withheld from them the lower baptism of water, and kept aloof from them as still 'unclean?'\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["held their peace and glorified God--Well had it been if, when Paul afterwards adduced equally resistless evidence in justification of the same line of procedure, this Jewish party had shown the same reverential and glad submission! \n\nThen hath God also granted to the Gentiles, &c.--rather, \"granted to the Gentiles also.\" (See a similar misplacement of \"also\" in Heb 12:1). To \"grant repentance unto life\"--that is, \"such as issues in life\" (compare Co2 7:10, \"repentance unto salvation\")--is more than to be willing to pardon upon repentance [GROTIUS]. The case of Cornelius is so manifestly one of grace reigning in every stage of his religious history, that we can hardly doubt that this was just the feature of it which they meant here to express. And this is the grace that reigns in every conversion.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["THE GOSPEL BEING PREACHED TO GENTILES AT ANTIOCH ALSO BARNABAS IS SENT THITHER FROM JERUSALEM, WHO HAILS THEIR ACCESSION AND LABORS AMONG THEM. (Act 11:19-24)\n\nthey which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen--and who \"went everywhere preaching the word\" (Act 8:4). \n\ntravelled as far as Phenice--that part of the Mediterranean coast which, commencing a little north of CÃ&brvbrsarea, stretches northwards for upwards of one hundred miles, halfway to Antioch. \n\nand Cyprus--(See on Act 4:36). An active commercial intercourse subsisted between Phenice and Cyprus. \n\nand Antioch--near the head of the northeast coast of the Mediterranean, on the river Orontes, and containing a large colony of Jews, to whose religion there were there numerous proselytes. \"It was almost an Oriental Rome, in which all the forms of the civilized life of the empire found some representative; and through the two first centuries of the Christian era it was what Constantinople became afterwards, 'the Gate of the East'\" [HOWSON].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene--(see on Luk 23:26); as Lucius, mentioned in Act 13:1. \n\nspake unto the Grecians--rather, \"the Greeks,\" that is, uncircumcised Gentiles (as the true reading beyond doubt is). The Gospel had, from the first, been preached to \"the Grecians\" or Greek-speaking Jews, and these \"men of Cyprus and Cyrene\" were themselves \"Grecians.\" How, then, can we suppose that the historian would note, as something new and singular (Act 11:22), that some of the dispersed Christians preached to them?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["a great number believed--Thus the accession of Cornelius and his party was not the first admission of uncircumcised Gentiles into the Church. (See on Act 10:1.) Nay, we read of no influence which the accession of Cornelius and his house had on the further progress of the Gospel among the Gentiles; whereas there here open upon us operations upon the Gentiles from quite a different quarter, and attended with ever growing success. The only great object served by the case of Cornelius was the formal recognition of the principles which that case afterwards secured. (See on Act 15:19-29.)\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":22,"content":["sent . . . Barnabas . . . as far as Antioch--implying that even on the way to Antioch he found churches to visit [OLSHAUSEN]. It was in the first instance, no doubt, a mission of inquiry; and no one could be more suitable to inquire into the proceedings of those Cyprians and Cyrenians than one who was himself a \"Grecian\" of Cyprus (Act 4:36), and \"a son of consolation.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["when he . . . had seen the grace of God--in the new converts. \n\nwas glad--owned and rejoiced in it at once as divine, though they were uncircumcised. \n\nexhorted them all that with purpose of heart--as opposed to a hasty and fickle discipleship. \n\nthey would cleave unto the Lord--the Lord Jesus.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["For he was a good man--The sense of \"good\" here is plainly \"large-hearted,\" \"liberal-minded,\" rising above narrow Jewish sectarianism, and that because, as the historian adds, he was \"full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.\" \n\nand much people were added unto the Lord--This proceeding of Barnabas, so full of wisdom, love, and zeal, was blessed to the great increase of the Christian community in that important city.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["BARNABAS, FINDING THE WORK IN ANTIOCH TOO MUCH FOR HIM, GOES TO TARSUS FOR SAUL--THEY LABOR THERE TOGETHER FOR A WHOLE YEAR WITH MUCH SUCCESS, AND ANTIOCH BECOMES THE HONORED BIRTHPLACE OF THE TERM CHRISTIAN. (Act 11:25-26)\n\nThen departed Barnabas to Tarsus for to seek Saul--Of course, this was after the hasty despatch of Saul to Tarsus, no doubt by Barnabas himself among others, to escape the fury of the Jews at Jerusalem. And as Barnabas was the first to take the converted persecutor by the hand and procure his recognition as a disciple by the brethren at Jerusalem (Act 9:27), so he alone seems at that early period to have discerned in him those peculiar endowments by virtue of which he was afterwards to eclipse all others. Accordingly, instead of returning to Jerusalem, to which, no doubt, he sent accounts of his proceedings from time to time, finding that the mine in Antioch was rich in promise and required an additional and powerful hand to work, he leaves it for a time, takes a journey to Tarsus, \"finds Saul\" (seemingly implying--not that he lay hid [BENGEL], but that he was engaged at the time in some preaching circuit--see on Act 15:23), and returns with him to Antioch. Nor were his hopes disappointed. As co-pastors, for the time being, of the Church there, they so labored that the Gospel, even in that great and many-sided community, achieved for itself a name which will live and be gloried in as long as this world lasts, as the symbol of all that is most precious to the fallen family of man:--\"The disciples were called CHRISTIANS first in Antioch.\" This name originated not within, but without, the Church; not with their Jewish enemies, by whom they were styled \"Nazarenes\" (Act 24:5), but with the heathen in Antioch, and (as the form of the word shows) with the Romans, not the Greeks there [OLSHAUSEN]. It was not at first used in a good sense (as Act 26:28; Pe1 4:16 show), though hardly framed out of contempt (as DE WETTE, BAUMGARTEN, &c.); but as it was a noble testimony to the light in which the Church regarded Christ--honoring Him as their only Lord and Saviour, dwelling continually on His name, and glorying in it--so it was felt to be too apposite and beautiful to be allowed to die.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":27,"content":["BY OCCASION OF A FAMINE BARNABAS AND SAUL RETURN TO JERUSALEM WITH A CONTRIBUTION FOR THE RELIEF OF THEIR SUFFERING BRETHREN. (Act 11:27-30)\n\ncame prophets from Jerusalem--inspired teachers, a class we shall afterwards frequently meet with, who sometimes, but not necessarily, foretold future events. They are classed next to apostles (Co1 12:28-29; Eph 4:11).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["that there should be great dearth throughout all the world--the whole Roman empire. \n\nwhich came to pass in the days of Claudius CÃ&brvbrsar--Four famines occurred during his reign. This one in Judea and the adjacent countries took place, A.D. 41 [JOSEPHUS, Antiquities, 20.2,5]. An important date for tracing out the chronology of the Acts. (But this subject is too difficult and extensive to admit of being handled here).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":29,"content":["Then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief, &c.--This was the pure prompting of Christian love, which shone so bright in those earliest days of the Gospel.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":30,"content":["sent it to the elders--an office well known to be borrowed from the synagogue; after the model of which, and not at all of the temple, the Christian Churches were constituted by the apostles. \n\nby the hands of Barnabas and Saul--This was Saul's SECOND VISIT TO JERUSALEM after his conversion.\n\n\n\n\nNext: Acts Chapter 12\n\n"]}],"introduction":"PETER VINDICATES HIMSELF BEFORE THE CHURCH IN JERUSALEM FOR HIS PROCEDURE TOWARDS THE GENTILES. (Acts 11:1-18)\n\nthe apostles and brethren . . . in Judea--rather, \"throughout Judea.\"\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/11.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":11},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/12.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":12},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/10.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":10},"numberOfVerses":18}