{"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":4,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["the number of the men--or males, exclusive of women; though the word sometimes includes both. \n\nabout five thousand--and this in Jerusalem, where the means of detecting the imposture or crushing the fanaticism, if such it had been, were within everyone's reach, and where there was every inducement to sift it to the bottom.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["their rulers, &c.--This was a regular meeting of the Sanhedrim (see on Mat 2:4).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["Annas . . . and Caiaphas--(See on Luk 3:2). \n\nJohn and Alexander--of whom nothing is known.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["By what power or . . . name have ye done this--thus admitting the reality of the miracle, which afterwards they confess themselves unable to deny (Act 4:16).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["Then, filled with the Holy Ghost, said--(See Mar 13:11; Luk 21:15).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["Be it known unto you . . . and to all the people of Israel--as if emitting a formal judicial testimony to the entire nation through its rulers now convened. \n\nby the name of Jesus, &c.--(See on Act 3:13, &c.). \n\neven by him doth this man stand before you whole--for from Act 4:14 it appears that the healed man was at that moment before their eyes.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["This is the stone which was set at naught of you builders, &c.--This application of Psa 118:22, already made by our Lord Himself before some of the same \"builders\" (Mat 21:42), is here repeated with peculiar propriety after the deed of rejection had been consummated, and the rejected One had, by His exaltation to the right hand of the Majesty on high, become \"the head of the corner.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved--How sublimely does the apostle, in these closing words, shut up these rulers of Israel to Jesus for salvation, and in what universal and emphatic terms does he hold up his Lord as the one Hope of men!\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men--that is, uninstructed in the learning of the Jewish schools, and of the common sort; men in private life, untrained to teaching. \n\ntook knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus--recognized them as having been in His company; remembering possibly, that they had seen them with Him [MEYER, BLOOMFIELD, ALFORD]; but, more probably, perceiving in their whole bearing what identified them with Jesus: that is, \"We thought we had got rid of Him; but lo! He reappears in these men, and all that troubled us in the Nazarene Himself has yet to be put down in these His disciples.\" What a testimony to these primitive witnesses! Would that the same could be said of their successors!\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["a notable miracle . . . done by them is manifest to all . . . in Jerusalem; and we cannot deny it--And why should ye wish to deny it, O ye rulers, but that ye hate the light, and will not come to the light lest your deeds should be reproved?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["But that it spread no further . . . let us straitly--strictly. \n\nthreaten . . . that they speak henceforth to no man in this name--Impotent device! Little knew they the fire that was burning in the bones of those heroic disciples.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["Whether it be right . . . to hearken to you more than . . . God, judge ye.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard--There is here a wonderful union of sober, respectful appeal to the better reason of their judges, and calm, deep determination to abide the consequences of a constrained testimony, which betokens a power above their own resting upon them, according to promise.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["finding nothing how they might punish them, because of the people--not at a loss for a pretext, but at a loss how to do it so as not to rouse the opposition of the people.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["PETER AND JOHN DISMISSED FROM THE SAMHEDRIM, REPORT THE PROCEEDINGS TO THE ASSEMBLED DISCIPLES--THEY ENGAGE IN PRAYER--THE ASTONISHING ANSWER AND RESULTS. (Act 4:23-37)\n\nbeing let go, they went to their own company--Observe the two opposite classes, representing the two interests which were about to come into deadly conflict.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["they lifted up their voice--the assembled disciples, on hearing Peter's report. \n\nwith one accord--the breasts of all present echoing every word of this sublime prayer. \n\nLord--(See on Luk 2:29). Applied to God, the term expresses absolute authority. \n\nGod which hast made heaven and earth--against whom, therefore, all creatures are powerless.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["by the mouth of . . . David--to whom the Jews ascribed the second Psalm, though anonymous; and internal evidence confirms it. David's spirit sees with astonishment \"the heathen, the people, the kings and princes of the earth,\" in deadly combination against the sway of Jehovah and His Anointed (his Messiah, or Christ), and asks \"why\" it is. This fierce confederacy our praying disciples see in full operation, in the \"gathering together of Herod and Pilate, the Gentiles (the Roman authority), and the people of Israel, against God's holy Child ('Servant') Jesus.\" (See on Act 3:13). The best ancient copies read, after \"were gathered together,\" \"in this city,\" which probably answers to \"upon my holy hill of Zion,\" in the Psa 2:6.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["thy hand and thy counsel determined . . . to be done--that is, \"Thy counsel\" determined to be done by \"Thy hand.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":29,"content":["now, Lord, behold their threatenings--Recognizing in the threatenings of the Sanhedrim a declaration of war by the combined powers of the world against their infant cause, they seek not enthusiastically to hide from themselves its critical position, but calmly ask the Lord of heaven and earth to \"look upon their threatenings.\" \n\nthat with all boldness they may speak thy word--Rising above self, they ask only fearless courage to testify for their Master, and divine attestation to their testimony by miracles of healing, &c., in His name.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":31,"content":["place was shaken--glorious token of the commotion which the Gospel was to make (Act 17:6; compare Act 16:26), and the overthrow of all opposing powers in which this was to issue. \n\nthey were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and spake, &c.--The Spirit rested upon the entire community, first, in the very way they had asked, so that they \"spake the word with boldness\" (Act 4:29, Act 4:31); next, in melting down all selfishness, and absorbing even the feeling of individuality in an intense and glowing realization of Christian unity. The community of goods was but an outward expression of this, and natural in such circumstances.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":33,"content":["with great power--effect on men's minds. \n\ngreat grace was upon them all--The grace of God copiously rested on the whole community.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":35,"content":["laid . . . at the apostles' feet--sitting, it may be, above the rest. But the expression may be merely derived from that practice, and here meant figuratively.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":36,"content":["Joses, &c.--This is specified merely as an eminent example of that spirit of generous sacrifice which pervaded all. \n\nson of consolation--no doubt so surnamed from the character of his ministry. \n\na Levite--who, though as a tribe having no inheritance, might and did acquire property as individuals (Deu 18:8). \n\nCyprus--a well-known island in the Mediterranean.\n\n\n\n\nNext: Acts Chapter 5\n\n"]}],"introduction":"PETER AND JOHN BEFORE THE SAMHEDRIM. (Act 4:1-13)\n\nthe captain--of the Levitical guard. \n\nof the temple--annoyed at the disturbance created around it. \n\nand the Sadducees--who \"say that there is no resurrection\" (Act 23:8), irritated at the apostles \"preaching through (rather, 'in') Jesus the resurrection from the dead\"; for the resurrection of Christ, if a fact, effectually overthrew the Sadducean doctrine.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/4.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":4},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/5.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":5},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/3.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":3},"numberOfVerses":23}