{"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":5,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["why hath Satan filled--\"why . . . fill--\"why hast thou suffered him to fill\" \n\nthine heart--so criminally entertaining his suggestion? Compare Act 5:4, \"why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart?\" And see Joh 13:2, Joh 13:27. \n\nto lie to the Holy Ghost--to men under His supernatural illumination.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["While it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?--from which we see how purely voluntary were all these sacrifices for the support of the infant community. \n\nnot lied to men but God--to men so entirely the instruments of the directing Spirit that the lie was rather told to Him: language clearly implying both the distinct personality and the proper divinity of the Holy Ghost.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["Ananias . . . gave up the ghost . . . great fear came on all that heard these things--on those without the Christian circle; who, instead of disparaging the followers of the Lord Jesus, as they might otherwise have done on the discovery of such hypocrisy, were awed at the manifest presence of Divinity among them, and the mysterious power of throwing off such corrupt matter which rested upon the young Church.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["the young men--some of the younger and more active members of the church, not as office-bearers, nor coming forward now for the first time, but who probably had already volunteered their services in making subordinate arrangements. In every thriving Christian community such volunteers may be expected, and will be found eminently useful.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much--naming the sum.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["How is it that ye have agreed together--(See on Act 5:2). \n\nto tempt the Spirit--try whether they could escape detection by that omniscient Spirit of whose supernatural presence with the apostles they had had such full evidence. \n\nfeet of them that buried thy husband are at the door--How awfully graphic!\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["buried her by her husband--The later Jews buried before sunset of the day of death.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["And great fear came upon all the church, &c.--This effect on the Christian community itself was the chief design of so startling a judgment; which had its counterpart, as the sin itself had, in Achan (Jos. 7:1-26), while the time--at the commencement of a new career--was similar.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["THE PROGRESS OF THE NEW CAUSE LEADS TO THE ARREST OF THE APOSTLES--THEY ARE MIRACULOUSLY DELIVERED FROM PRISON, RESUME THEIR TEACHING, BUT ALLOW THEMSELVES TO BE CONDUCTED BEFORE THE SAMHEDRIM. (Act 5:12-26)\n\nSolomon's Porch--(See on Joh 10:23).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["of the rest durst no man join himself, &c.--Of the unconverted none ventured, after what had taken place, to profess discipleship; but yet their number continually increased.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["into the streets--\"in every street.\" \n\non beds and couches--The words denote the softer couches of the rich and the meaner cribs of the poor [BENGEL]. \n\nshadow of Peter . . . might overshadow some of them--Compare Act 19:12; Luk 8:46. So Elisha. Now the predicted greatness of Peter (Mat 16:18), as the directing spirit of the early Church, was at its height.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["sect of the Sadducees--See on Act 4:1 for the reason why this is specified.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["by night--the same night.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["all the words of this life--beautiful expression for that Life in the Risen One which was the burden of their preaching!\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["entered into the temple, &c.--How self-possessed! the indwelling Spirit raising them above fear. \n\ncalled . . . all the senate, &c.--an unusually general convention, though hastily summoned.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["the prison . . . shut . . . keepers . . . before the doors, but . . . no man within--the reverse of the miracle in Act 16:26; a similar contrast to that of the nets at the miraculous draughts of fishes (Luk 5:6; Joh 21:11).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["they doubted--\"were in perplexity.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":26,"content":["without violence, for they feared, &c.--hardened ecclesiastics, all unawed by the miraculous tokens of God's presence with the apostles, and the fear of the mob only before their eyes!\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":27,"content":["SECOND APPEARANCE AND TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SAMHEDRIM--ITS RAGE CALMED BY GAMALIEL--BEING DISMISSED, THEY DEPART REJOICING, AND CONTINUE THEIR PREACHING. (Acts 5:27-42)\n\nye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine--noble testimony to the success of their preaching, and (for the reason mentioned on Act 4:4) to the truth of their testimony, from reluctant lips!\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["intend to bring this man's blood upon us--They avoid naming Him whom Peter gloried in holding up [BENGEL]. In speaking thus, they seem to betray a disagreeable recollection of their own recent imprecation, His blood be upon us,\" &c. (Mat 27:25), and of the traitor's words as he threw down the money, \"I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood\" (Mat 27:4).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":29,"content":["Then Peter, &c.--(See on Act 2:22, and Act 3:13, &c.).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":31,"content":["Prince and a Saviour--the first word expressing that Royalty which all Israel looked for in Messiah, the second the Saving character of it which they had utterly lost sight of. Each of these features in our Lord's work enters into the other, and both make one glorious whole (compare Act 3:15; Heb 2:10). \n\nto give--dispensing as a \"Prince.\" \n\nrepentance and remission of sins--as a \"Saviour\"; \"repentance\" embracing all that change which issues in the faith which secures \"forgiveness\" (compare Act 2:38; Act 20:21). How gloriously is Christ here exhibited; not, as in other places, as the Medium, but as the Dispenser of all spiritual blessings!\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":32,"content":["we are his witnesses . . . and the Holy Ghost--They as competent human witnesses to facts, and the Holy Ghost as attesting them by undeniable miracles.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":33,"content":["cut to the heart and took--\"were taking.\" \n\ncounsel to slay them--How different this feeling and the effect of it from that \"pricking of the heart\" which drew from the first converts on the day of Pentecost the cry, \"Men and brethren, what shall we do?\" (Act 2:37). The words used in the two places are strikingly different.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":34,"content":["Then stood up . . . Gamaliel--in all probability one of that name celebrated in the Jewish writings for his wisdom, the son of Simeon (possibly the same who took the infant Saviour in his arms, Luk 2:25-35), and grandson of HILLEL, another celebrated rabbi. He died eighteen years before the destruction of Jerusalem [LIGHTFOOT].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":35,"content":["Theudas--not the same with a deceiver of that name whom JOSEPHUS mentions as heading an insurrection some twelve years after this [Antiquities, 20.5.1], but some other of whom he makes no mention. Such insurrections were frequent.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":37,"content":["Judas of Galilee--(See on Luk 2:2, and Luk 13:1-3) [JOSEPHUS, Antiquities, 13.1.1].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":38,"content":["if . . . of men, it will come to naught--This neutral policy was true wisdom, in the then temper of the council. But individual neutrality is hostility to Christ, as He Himself teaches (Luk 11:23).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":40,"content":["beaten them--for disobeying their orders (compare Luk 23:16).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":41,"content":["departed . . . rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name--\"thought worthy by God to be dishonored by man\" (Mat 5:12; Pe1 4:14, Pe1 4:16) [WEBSTER and WILKINSON]. This was their first taste of persecution, and it felt sweet for His sake whose disciples they were.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":42,"content":["in every house--in private. (See on Act 2:46). \n\nceased not to preach Jesus Christ--that is, Jesus (to be the) Christ.\n\n\n\n\nNext: Acts Chapter 6\n\n"]}],"introduction":"ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA. (Act 5:1-11)\n\nkept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it--The coolness with which they planned the deception aggravated the guilt of this couple. \n\nbrought a certain part--pretending it to be the whole proceeds of the sale.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/5.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":5},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/6.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":6},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/4.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":4},"numberOfVerses":31}