{"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":22,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["a Jew of Tarsus, brought up in this city, at the feet--(See on Luk 10:39). \n\nof Gamaliel--(See on Act 5:34); a fact of great importance in the apostle's history, standing in the same relation to his future career as Moses' education in the Egyptian court to the work for which he was destined. \n\nthe perfect manner of the law of the fathers--the strictest form of traditional Judaism. \n\nzealous--\"a zealot.\" \n\ntoward God as ye all are this day--his own former murderous zeal against the disciples of the Lord Jesus being merely reflected in their present treatment of himself.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["I persecuted, &c.--(See on Act 9:1-2; Act 9:5-7).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["the high priest--still alive. \n\ndoth bear me witness, and all the estate of the elders--the whole Sanhedrim.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["Jesus of Nazareth--the Nazarene. See on Act 9:5.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["they that were with me--(See on Act 9:7, &c.)\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["Ananias, a devout man, according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews which dwelt there--One would not know from this description of Ananias that he was a Christian at all, the apostles object being to hold him up as unexceptionable, even to the most rigid Jews.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["The God of our fathers hath chosen thee--studiously linking the new economy upon the old, as but the sequel of it; both having one glorious Author.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["that thou shouldest . . . see that--\"the\" \n\nJust One--compare Act 3:14; Act 7:52. \n\nhear the voice of his mouth--in order to place him on a level with the other apostles, who had \"seen the [risen] Lord.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["be baptized and wash away thy sins--This way of speaking arises from baptism being the visible seal of remission. \n\ncalling on the name of the Lord--rather, \"having called,\" that is, after having done so; referring to the confession of Christ which preceded baptism, as Act 8:37.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["it came to pass, &c.--This thrilling dialogue between the glorified Redeemer and his chosen vessel is nowhere else related. \n\nwhen I was come again to Jerusalem--on the occasion mentioned in Act 9:26-29. \n\nwhile I prayed in the temple--He thus calls their attention to the fact that after his conversion he kept up his connection with the temple as before.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["get . . . quickly out of Jerusalem--compare Act 9:29. \n\nfor they will not receive thy testimony . . . And I said, Lord, they know, &c.--\"Can it be, Lord, that they will resist the testimony of one whom they knew so well as among the bitterest of all against Thy disciples, and whom nothing short of resistless evidence could have turned to Thee?\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["depart for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles--that is, \"Enough; thy testimony is not to be thrown away upon Jerusalem; the Gentiles, afar off, are thy peculiar sphere.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":22,"content":["gave him audience to this word . . . then . . . Away with such a fellow from the earth, &c.--Their national prejudices lashed into fury at the mention of a mission to the Gentiles, they would speedily have done to him as they did to Stephen, but for the presence and protection of the Roman officer.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["examined by scourging--according to the Roman practice. \n\nthat he might know wherefore they cried so--Paul's speech being to him in an unknown tongue, he concluded from the horror which it kindled in the vast audience that he must have been guilty of some crime.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["Paul said to the centurion that stood by--to superintend the torture and receive the confession expected to be wrung from him. \n\nIs it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, &c.--See on Act 16:37.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":27,"content":["art thou a Roman?--showing that this being of Tarsus, which he had told him before (Act 21:39) did not necessarily imply that he was a Roman citizen.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["With a great sum obtained I this freedom--Roman citizenship was bought and sold in the reign of Claudius, we know, at a high price: at a subsequent date, for next to nothing. But to put in a false claim to this privilege was a capital crime. \n\nI was free born--born to it, by purchase, or in reward of services, on the part of his father or some ancestor.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":29,"content":["chief captain also was afraid, &c.--See on Act 16:38.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":30,"content":["commanded the chief priests and all their council to appear--that is, the Sanhedrim to be formally convened. Note here the power to order a Sanhedrim to try this case, assumed by the Roman officers and acquiesced in on their part.\n\n\n\n\nNext: Acts Chapter 23\n\n"]}],"introduction":"PAUL'S DEFENSE FROM THE STAIRS OF THE FORTRESS--THE RAGE OF THE AUDIENCE BURSTING FORTH, THE COMMANDANT HAS HIM BROUGHT INTO THE FORT TO BE EXAMINED BY SCOURGING, BUT LEARNING THAT HE IS A ROMAN, HE ORDERS HIS RELEASE AND COMMANDS THE SAMHEDRIM TO TRY HIM. (Acts 22:1-30)\n\nwhen they heard . . . the Hebrew tongue--(See on Act 21:40). \n\nthey kept the more silence--They could have understood him in Greek, and doubtless fully expected the renegade to address them in that language, but the sound of their holy mother tongue awed them into deeper silence.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/22.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":22},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/23.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":23},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/21.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":21},"numberOfVerses":19}