i. THE GENTILES IN THE CHURCH. (XI 19) THEY THEN THAT WERE SCATTERED THROUGH THE TRIBULA- TION THAT AROSE ON ACCOUNT OF STEPHEN TRAVELLED {i.e., made missionary journeys) AS FAR AS PHOZNICE AND CYPRUS AND ANTIOCH, SPEAKING THE WORD TO JEWS AND NONE SAVE JEWS. (20) BUT THERE WERE SOME OF THEM, MEN OF CYPRUS AND CYRENE, WHO WHEN THEY WERE COME TO ANTIOCH, USED TO SPEAK TO GREEKS ALSO, GIVING THE GOOD NEWS OF THE LORD JESUS. (21) AND THE HAND OF THE LORD WAS WITH THEM, AND A GREAT NUMBER THAT BELIEVED TURNED UNTO THE LORD.
When Acts was written, the Church of Antioch was only about fifty years old, but already its beginning seems to have been lost in obscurity. It had not been founded, it had grown by unrecorded and almost unobserved steps. In the dispersion of the primitive Church at Jerusalem, during the troubles ensuing on the bold action of Stephen, certain Cypriote and Cyrenaic Jews, who had been brought up in Greek lands and had wider outlook on the world than the Palestinian Jews, came to Antioch. There they made the innovation of addressing not merely Jews but also Greeks. We may understand here ( 1 ) that the words used
(40)
Sec. i. The Gentiles in the Church. 41
imply successful preaching and the admission of Greeks to the Christian congregation, and (2) that such an innova- tion took place by slow degrees, and began in the synagogue, where Greek proselytes heard the word. The Cypriote and Cyrenaic Jews began pointedly to include these Greeks of the synagogue in their invitations, and thus a mixed body of Jews and Greeks constituted the primitive congregation of Antioch ; but the Greeks had entered through the door of the synagogue (see pp. 62, 85, 156).
In verses 19-21 the narrative for the moment goes back to a time earlier than X and XI 1-18, and starts a new thread of history from the death of Stephen (VII 60). That event was a critical one in the history of the Church. The primitive Church had clung to Jerusalem, and lived there in a state of simplicity and almost community of goods, which was an interesting phase of society, but was quite opposed to the spirit in which Jesus had said, " Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation". For the time it seemed that the religion of Christ was stagnating into a sociological experiment. Stephen's vigour provoked a persecution, which dispersed itinerant missionaries over Judaea and Samaria (VI 1 1 1-4), first among whom was Philip the colleague of Stephen. New congrega- tions of Christians were formed in many towns (VIII 14, 25, 40, IX 31, 32, 35, 42, X 44) ; and it became necessary that, if these were to be kept in relation with the central body in Jerusalem, journeys of survey should be made by delegates from Jerusalem. The first of these journeys was made by Peter and John, who were sent to Samaria, when the news that a congregation had been formed there by Philip reached Jerusalem (VIII 14). This may be taken as a specimen of many similar journeys, one of which is recorded
42 The Church in Antioch. Chap. III.
(IX 32 f.) on account of the important development that took place in its course. It appears from Acts that Peter was the leading spirit in these journeys of organisation, which knit together the scattered congregations in Judaea and Samaria. Hence the first great question in the de- velopment of the Church was presented to him, viz., whether Hebrew birth was a necessary condition for entrance into the kingdom of the Messiah and membership of the Christian Church. That question must necessarily be soon forced on the growing Church ; for proselytes were not rare, and the Christian doctrine, which was preached in the synagogues, reached them. It was difficult to find any justification for making the door of the Church narrower than the door of the synagogue, and there is no record that any one explicitly advocated the view that Christianity should be confined to the chosen people, though the con- dition and regulations on which non-Jews should be admitted formed the subject of keen controversy in the following years.