a short time before the day of Pentecost, not the day itself. Weiss and others suppose that the expression refers to the completing of the interval of time be- tween the Paschal Feast and Pentecost. Vulgate (cf. Syriac) reads ‘‘cum com- plerentur dies Pentecostes,” and so all English versions have “days” except A. and R.V. The verb is only used by St. Luke in the N.T., twice in his Gospel, viii. 23, and in the same sense as here, ix. 51, and once more in the pas- sage before us. We have the noun συµπλήρωσις in the same sense in LXX 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21, Dan. (Theod.) ix. 2, 1 Esdras i. 58; see Friedrich, ubi supra, Ῥ. 44. The mode of expression is He- braistic, as we see also from Exod. vii. 25, Jeremiah xxxvi. 10 (LXX). St. Luke may be using the expression of a day which had begun, according to Jewish reckoning, at the previous sunset, and which thus in the early morning could not be said to be either fulfilled or past, but which was in the process of being fulfilled (Hilgenfeld, Zettschrift fiir wissenschaft. Theol., p. 90, 1895; Knabenbauer, iz loco). The parallel passage in Luke ix. 51 cannot be quoted to support the view that the reference here is to a period preceding the day of Pentecost, since in that pas- sage we have ἡμέρας, not ἡμέραν as here, and, although the interpretation of the word as referring to the approach of the Feast is possible, yet the circumstances and the view evidently taken by the nar- rator point decisively to the very day of the Feast (see Schmid, Biblische Theol., p. 283). On the construction ἐν τῷ with the infinitive, see Blass, Grammatik des N. G., pp. 232, 234, and Dalman, Die Worte Fesu, p. 27. It is quite in the style of St. Luke, who frequently employs
it; of. the Hebrew use of 3, Fried-
72