PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 2
Stokes, George Thomas · 158,059 words · 178 reading sections
Fourth Series, 1890-1.
EDITED BY THE REV. W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D. _Editor of "The Expositor"_ NEW YORK A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 51 EAST TENTH STREET 1892 _Crown 8vo, cloth, price $1 50c. each vol._ Colossians. By A. MACLAREN, D.D. St. Mark. By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh. Genesis. By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D. 1 Samuel. …
253 wordsSECTION 2Preface.
The Psalms. By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. I. 1 and 2 Thessalonians. By JAS. DENNEY, B.D. The Book of Job. By R. A. WATSON, D.D. Ephesians. By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A. The Gospel of St. John. By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. II. The Acts of the Apostles. By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. II. Philippians. By Principal RAIN…
923 wordsSECTION 3Preface.
But though I have not dealt in any formal way with the critical theories urged concerning the Acts, I have taken every opportunity of pointing out the evidence for its early date and genuine character furnished by that particular line of historical exposition and illustration which I have adopted. It will be at once se…
669 wordsSECTION 4The First Gentile Convert.
ALL SAINTS' VICARAGE, BLACKROCK, _Nov. 4th, 1892_. ACTS vii. 58; xxii. 3. St. Paul's Appearance on the Christian Stage and its Results--The Tübingen Theory--His Parentage--Birthplace-- Testimony of St. Epiphanius--Early Friends--Education-- Trade--Gamaliel and his Influence--Evidence of Talmud-- Pharisaic School…
327 wordsSECTION 5St. Paul'S Ordination And First Missionary Tour
ACTS x. 9-15. St. Peter led to Joppa Unconsciously--His Period of Repose--Joppa and Missions to the Gentile World-- Jonah--Peter and the Hour of Prayer--Value of Forms-- Canonical Hours--Tertullian's Testimony--Nature of Peter's Vision--Conditioned by his Natural State-- Exactly suited to Destroy his Prejudices--…
284 wordsSECTION 6St. Paul In Greece.
ACTS xv. 1, 2, 6, 19. History of the great General Councils--Originates at that of Jerusalem--Date and Subject-matter--The Controversy about Circumcision--Social Questions springing from it-- St. Paul's Position--His Apparent Inconsistencies-- Lessons of Apostolic Council--Early Church Scene of Controversies--No …
268 wordsSECTION 7A Prisoner In Bonds.
ACTS xviii. 19-21, 24-26; xix. 1. History of Ephesus--Cenchreæ and its Church--Aquila and his Vow--Christianity and External Actions--Judaism and Christianity confounded by Romans--St. Paul's Journey to Ephesus and Jerusalem--Visit to Galatia-- Ephesus and John's Disciples--Slow Progress of Gospel in Apostolic Ag…
317 wordsSECTION 8_The Training Of Saul The Rabbi._
ACTS xxvii. 1-3; xxviii. 16. St. Paul as a Traveller and a Prisoner--Length of his Imprisonment--Blessed Results of his Captivity--"The Prisoner of the Lord"--Teaching of the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity--His Captivity Benefited--(_a_) His Personal Religion--(_b_) The Church at Cæsarea--(_c_) The Church at Ro…
1,268 wordsSECTION 9_The Training Of Saul The Rabbi._
But yet the story probably embodies a tradition substantially true, that St. Paul's parents were originally from Galilee. Galilee was intensely Hebrew. It was provincial, and the provinces are always far less affected by advance in thought or in religion than the towns, which are the chosen homes of innovation and of p…
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St. Paul and his parents might seem to an outsider mere Hellenists, but their Galilean origin and training enabled them to retain the intenser Judaism which qualified the Apostle to describe himself as not only of the stock of Israel, but as a Hebrew of the Hebrews. St. Paul's more immediate family connexions have als…
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[3] See 2 Tim. i. 5, and iii. 14, 15. It is evident that St. Paul's language implies an acquaintance with Timothy's family of very long standing. [4] Schœttgen's _Hor. Hebr._, vol. i., p. 89; Lewin's _St. Paul_, vol. i., p. 7. At five years old Jewish children of parents like St. Paul's advanced to the direct stud…
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[5] Josephus, _Antiqq._, XVIII., ix., 1, says of certain Jews of Babylon, "Now there were two men, Asineus and Anileus, brethren to one another. They were destitute of a father, and their mother put them to learn the art of weaving curtains, it not being esteemed a disgrace among them for men to be weavers of cloth…
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[8] Basnage, in his _History of the Jews_, translated by Thomas Taylor, Book III., ch. vi., p. 168 (London, 1708), states, "It is agreed by the generality of Jewish and Christian doctors that the Talmud was completed in the 505th year of the Christian Æra." Cf. Serarius, _De Rabbinis_, Lib. I., c. ix., p. 251; Bart…
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[11] The rabbinical device of mixtures is fully explained in Buxtorf's _Lexicon_, col. 1657, Ed. Basil (1639), or in Kitto's _Biblical Encyclopædia_, under the article "Sabbath." The Talmud had a special treatise called _Tractatus Mixtorum_, which taught how, for instance, dwellings might be mixed or mingled so as …
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[13] The parallel between Hagar and Sarah is drawn out at full length after the rabbinical method in Basnage's _History of the Jews_ (Taylor's translation), book iii., ch. 22; in Lightfoot's _Galatians_, pp. 178, 179, 189-99, and Farrar's _St. Paul_, ch. iii. Philo in his writings uses the very same illustration. …
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[16] See St. Paul's address to the Jews of the Pisidian Antioch in Acts xiii. 34. Other specimens of the same rabbinical method used by St. Paul will be found in Rom. iii., iv., and ix. 33; 1 Cor. ix. Eph. iv. 8. Rabbinical learning, Hebrew discipline, Greek experience and life, these conspired together with natura…
257 wordsSECTION 17_The Conversion Of The Persecutor._
"But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison."--ACTS viii. 3. "But Saul, yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, and asked of him letters to Damascus unto the synagogues, that if he found a…
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I. _The Conduct of Saul._ Here we have a picture of St. Paul in his unconverted state: "Saul, yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord." This description is amply borne out by St. Paul himself, in which he even enlarges and gives us additional touches of the intensity of his antichristi…
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Now these passages have been thus set forth at length because they add many details to the bare statement of Acts ix., giving us a glimpse into those four or five dark and bloody years, the thought of which henceforth weighed so heavily upon the Apostle's mind and memory. Just let us notice these additional touches. He…
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[20] St. Paul, in 1 Tim. i. 15, says, "Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." This verse is of ancient and of very modern interest too. It shows that to the last St. Paul retained the keenest sense of his early wickedness. I…
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[21] The references for all these changes are given in Lewin's _Fasti_, and in his _Life of St. Paul_, with which Josephus, _Antiqq._, XVIII., iv., should be compared. And now a question here arises, How is it that the high priest could exercise such powers and arrest his co-religionists in a foreign town? The answe…
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[25] I know it is a common opinion that the Jews had no power of capital punishment and that the Romans permitted the infliction merely of scourgings and such minor penalties. Lightfoot, in his _Horæ Hebraicæ_ on Matt. xxvi. 3; John xviii. 31; Acts ix. 2, controverts this view in long and learned notes. The Jews c…
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[27] This sense of the awful importance of Christianity as the Way made the Christians enthusiastic and determined in their efforts to spread their religion. In the earliest apology or defence of Christianity, that of Aristides, which I have fully described in the previous volume of this Commentary, we find this fa…
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[29] See Petrie's "Tara" in the _Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, t. xviii., and _Ireland and the Celtic Church_, by G. T. Stokes, pp. 80, 81, for illustrations of this point. [30] See Geikie's _The Holy Land and the Bible_, p. 38. The exact spot where Saul was arrested in his mad career is a matter of som…
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[32] Lord Lyttelton's _Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul_ is a work now almost unknown to ordinary students of the Bible. It was written in the reign of George II. by the Lord Lyttelton of that day famous as a historian and a poet. Dr. Johnson said of it that it is "a treatise to which infidelity has never…
1,082 wordsSECTION 26_The Conversion Of The Persecutor._
[35] The Rev. Dr. Abbott, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, in a learned work, _Biblical Essays_, lately published, pp. 142 and 146, points out that the lower classes of the Jewish population did not understand the ancient Hebrew, a knowledge of which was in his opinion confined to a few scholars. Cf. also p. 168,…
874 wordsSECTION 27_The New Convert And His Human Teacher._
[37] See Cornelius à Lapide on Acts ix. 5, quoting from Bede; and St. Chrysostom in Cramer's _Catena_, p. 152, as quoted in Conybeare and Howson's _St. Paul_, vol. i., ch. iii., p. 111 (London, 1877). "Now there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias; and the Lord said unto him in a vision, Ananias. And…
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[40] See Tertullian's _De Pudicitia_, § 13, and compare Bishop Lightfoot's _Galatians_, p. 183 note. [41] See Dr. Farrar's long Excursus X., vol. i., p. 652, in his _Life of St. Paul_, for a discussion of this question. There is a portrait of St. Paul in Lewin's _St. Paul_, ii., 210, which shows him as blear-eyed.…
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I. Let us now consider the persons which cluster round the new convert, and specially the agent whom Christ used in the reception of Saul into the Church, and see what Scripture or tradition tells about them. One man stands prominent; his name was Ananias, a common one enough among the Jews, as the Acts of the Apostles…
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[43] Josephus, in his _Antiquities_, xx., 23, tells us of an Ananias, a Jewish merchant, who was instrumental in the conversion of Helena, Queen of Adiabene. The name Ananias signifies "Pleasing to God." Ananias was also the name of the messenger who is said to have conveyed the pretended letter of Abgar, King of E…
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[46] Judas of Acts xv. 22 is surnamed Barsabbas, as is also Joseph Justus of Acts i. 23. Lightfoot, _Hor. Heb._, on Acts i., conjectures that Judas of Acts xv. may have been the apostle of that name and that Joseph Justus was his brother. And now, to conclude this portion of our subject, we may add that the traditi…
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This is a very important point to insist upon in the present age, when men have endeavoured to represent the religion of the primitive Church in quite a different light, and to teach that St. Paul was the inventor of that dogmatic system which insists upon the supreme importance and the essential deity of the Person of…
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[49] See vol. i., pp. 338-41. Our Lord protests beforehand unto St. Paul against such a perversion of the gospel of free grace with which His great Apostle had all his life to struggle. Antinomianism is as old as St. Paul's doctrine--so very much misunderstood--of justification. Our Lord raises His voice against it in…
1,313 wordsSECTION 34_The New Convert And His Human Teacher._
[51] It should be carefully noted that the great end of St. Paul's election is set forth by our Lord when speaking to Ananias as "to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel." From the very outset of Paul's Christian career his work as the Apostle of the Gentiles is thus clearly reveal…
355 wordsSECTION 35_Saul And Sinai._
"Saul was certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus. And straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, that He is the Son of God."--ACTS ix. 19, 20. We have bestowed a great deal of attention upon the incidents at Damascus, because the conversion of Saul of Tarsus is more closely connected with the…
700 wordsSECTION 36_Saul And Sinai._
"Even so the course of prayer who knows? It springs in silence where it will, Springs out of sight, and flows At first a lonely rill. "Unheard by all but angel ears, The good Cornelius knelt alone, Nor dreamed his prayers and tears Could help a world undone. "The while upon his terraced roof, The loved apostle…
1,380 wordsSECTION 37_Saul And Sinai._
[52] Archbishop Whately used to make an important distinction between things _anti_-Scriptural and things _un_-Scriptural. Things _anti_-Scriptural cannot be tolerated by the Church, because they contradict the Word of God. Things _un_-Scriptural, that is, things about which Scripture is silent and for which no di…
810 wordsSECTION 38_Saul And Sinai._
[54] Romans x. 10. III. The next step taken by the Apostle is equally plainly stated: "Straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, that He is the Son of God." But, though the words of the Acts are plain enough, it is not so easy to reconcile them with St. Paul's own account, as given in the Epistle to the Galat…
1,134 wordsSECTION 39_Saul And Sinai._
[56] Mr. Lewin, in his _St. Paul_, vol. i., p. 72, argues that the governor or ethnarch, as he is called by St. Paul in 2 Cor. xi. 32, was the Jewish chief magistrate of Damascus, appointed to that post by Aretas, King of Petra, who then held Damascus. The Jews were allowed by the Romans to have chief magistrates o…
1,023 wordsSECTION 40_Saul And Sinai._
[59] See Bishop Lightfoot's dissertation upon St. Paul's first visit to Jerusalem, and the use of the term apostle in the New Testament in his _Commentary on Galatians_, pp. 91-101. Cf. Volume I. of this Commentary, p. 348. We have now endeavoured to explain some of the difficulties which a comparison of St. Paul's…
1,047 wordsSECTION 41_Saul And Sinai._
[60] We may apply this typical fact in primitive Church history in a very modern direction. It would be very well if candidates for the sacred ministry always imitated St. Paul's departure into Arabia. I have known a great many promising careers spoiled because young deacons would select a heavy, laborious town or …
667 wordsSECTION 42_Saul And Sinai._
[61] See Joyce's _Irish Names of Places_, vol. i., p. 325. [62] I have touched upon the subject of the connexion between Syria and Egypt and Oriental monasticism on the one hand, and Gaul, England, and Ireland on the other, during the period which elapsed between A.D. 400 and 900, in _Ireland and the Celtic Church…
812 wordsSECTION 43_The First Gentile Convert._
"Now there was a certain man in Cæsarea, Cornelius by name, a centurion of the band called the Italian band, a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, who gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway. He saw in a vision openly, as it were about the ninth hour of the day, an angel of God com…
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The Emperor Caius Caligula, who ascended the throne of the empire about the time of Stephen's martyrdom, was a strange character. He was wholly self-willed, madly impious, utterly careless of human life, as indeed unregenerate mankind ever is. Christianity alone has taught the precious value of the individual human sou…
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[64] Perhaps it is well to note that this is not the classical word Æneas, which in Greek would be represented by Αἰνείας, but a different name with a short _e_, and is written in Greek Αἰνέασ. The latter is found in Thucydides and Xenophon: see Meyer _in loco_. We thus see how God by the secret guidance of His Sp…
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[65] I do not intend to raise any disputed question as to Church polity and government in this book, and so I may point out, without compromising my own views in the least, that even a Presbyterian may agree in this statement, as he may hold that his own teaching elder or minister corresponds to the primitive bish…
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[68] See Ramsay's _Historical Geography of Asia Minor_, pp. 51, 52. [69] The most detailed account of Cæsarea-on-the-Sea, its ruins and present state, will be found in the _Memoirs_ of the Survey of Western Palestine, vol. ii., pp. 13-29. It is accompanied with plans and maps, which show that ancient Roman Cæsarea…
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[71] Cornelius was a centurion of the Italian band. This is another of the accidental coincidences which attest the genuineness of the Acts. The Roman army was divided into two broad divisions, the legions and the auxiliary forces. Now the legions were never permanently quartered in Palestine till the great war wh…
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Another reason, however, may be found for this fact. The Scriptures never make light of discipline or training. "Train up a child in the way he should go" is a Divine precept. St. Paul, in his Pastoral Epistles, lays down as one great qualification for a bishop that he should have this power of exercising discipline an…
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IV. Again, looking at the whole passage we perceive therein illustrations of two important laws of the Divine life. We recognise in the case of Cornelius the working of that great principle of the kingdom of God often enunciated by the great Master: "To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly," …
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Now cannot these ideas be easily applied to our own individual cases? A young man, for instance, may be troubled with doubts and questions concerning certain portions of the Christian faith. Some persons make such doubts an excuse for plunging into scenes of riot and dissipation, quenching the light which God has given…
650 wordsSECTION 52_The Petrine Vision At Joppa._
"Now on the morrow, as they were on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour: and he became hungry, and desired to eat: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance; and he beholdeth the heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending, as it were a…
1,101 wordsSECTION 53_The Petrine Vision At Joppa._
I. Now, as in the case of Cornelius, so in the case of St. Peter, we note the _place_ where the chief actor in the scene abode. It was at Joppa, and Joppa was associated with many memories for the Jews. It has been from ancient times the port of Jerusalem, and is even now rising into somewhat of its former commercial g…
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II. We note, again, the _time_ when the vision was granted to St. Peter and the mind of the Lord was more fully disclosed to him. Joppa is separated from Cæsarea by a distance of thirty miles. The leading coast towns were then connected by an excellent road, along which horses and vehicles passed with ease. The centuri…
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[76] This is the rendering of Psalm lv. 18 according to the version in the Book of Common Prayer. [77] A deceased friend of mine, a well-known member of the Society of Friends, once remarked to me about this very point that his Society, to which he belonged to his dying day, while aiming at the highest spiritualit…
1,723 wordsSECTION 56_The Petrine Vision At Joppa._
[79] Calvin, in his commentary on Acts x. 12, has some excellent remarks on the scope and meaning of this vision. "I think that hereby is shown to Peter that the distinction which God hitherto made had now been removed. For as He had made a difference between animals; so by the choice of one nation for Himself, God…
1,083 wordsSECTION 57_The Petrine Vision At Joppa._
St. Peter then proceeds, in his address, to recapitulate the leading facts of the gospel story. He begins with John's baptism, glances at Christ's miracles, His crucifixion, resurrection, and mission of the apostles, concluding by announcing His future return to be the Judge of quick and dead. St. Peter must, of course…
1,188 wordsSECTION 58_The Petrine Vision At Joppa._
We are expressly informed too that our Lord had experience in His own person of this very danger. St. John tells us that Christ Himself had on one occasion to escape from the Jews when they were designing to take Him by force and make Him a King; while again the first chapter of this Book of Acts and the query which th…
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[80] The aim of Christianity was to strike at the essential evil of the human heart. One darling sin of man is ostentation. It was one special vice of society in the age of the Incarnation, as students of the history of that period know right well. Now the real objection to the Divine method of action about Christ'…
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[81] Tradition tells very little about Cornelius. There is indeed a long article devoted to him by the Bollandists, _Acta Sanctorum_, Feb. t. 1, p. 280, but there is nothing in it. He is commemorated on Feb. 2nd. The Greeks make him bishop of Scepsis, the Latins of Cæsarea. St. Jerome says that in his time the hous…
679 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.