3 , , > ‘ 9 x µαζον, ἐπεγινωσκόν τε αὐτοὺς OTL σὺν
129
a 35 ο 8 a τῷ ᾿Ιησοῦ ἦσαν: 14. τὸν δὲ
ἄνθρωπον βλέποντες σὺν αὐτοῖς ἑστῶτα τὸν τεθεραπευµένον, οὐδὲν
holds office in the State, but as the Greeks held that without political life there was no true education of a man, it was not unnatural that ἰδιώτης should acquire a somewhat contemptuous mean- ing, and so Plato joins it with ἀπράγμων, and Plutarch with ἄπρακτος and ἁπαί- δευτος (and instances in Wetstein). But further: in Trench, wu. s., p. 136, and Grimm, sub v., the ἰδιώτης is ‘a lay- man,” as compared with the ἰατρός, ‘the skilled physician,” Thuc. ii. 48, and the word is applied by Philo to the whole congregation of Israel as contrasted with the priests, and to subjects as con- trasted with their prince, cf. its only use in the LXX, Prov. vi. 8 (cf. Herod., ii., 81, vii., 199, and instances in Wetstein on 1 Cor. xiv. 16). Bearing this in mind, it would seem that the word is used by St. Paul (x Cor. xiv. 16, 23, 24) of believers devoid of special spiritual gifts, of prophecy or of speaking with tongues, and in the passage before us it is applied to those who, like the ἀγράμματοι, had been without professional training in the Rabbinical schools. The translation “ignorant” is somewhat unfortunate. ἰδιώτης certainly need not mean ignor- ant, cf. Plato, Legg., 830, A., avdpav σοφῶν ἰδιωτῶν te kai συνετῶν. St. Paul uses the word of himself, ἰδιώτης ἐν λόγῳ, 2 Cor. xi. 6, in a way which helps us to understand its meaning here, for it may well have been used contemptuously of him (as here by the Sadducees of Peter and John) by the Judaisers, who despised him as “unlearned” and a “layman”: he would not affect the Rabbinic subtle- ties and interpretations in which they boasted. Others take the word here as re- ferring to the social rank of the Apostles, “‘plebeians ” ‘common men” (Kuinoel, Olshausen, De Wette, Bengel, Hackett), but the word is not so used until Herodian, iv., 10, 4. See also Dean Plumptre’s note on the transition of the word through the Vulgate idiota to our word “' idiot” : Tyndale and Cranmer both render “ lay- men ”.—étreyivwokév τε: if we take those words to imply that the Sanhedrim only recognised during the trial that Peter and John had been amongst the disciples of Jesus, there is something unnatural and forced about such an interpretation, especially when we remember that all Jerusalem was speaking of them, vv. 16, 21, and that one of them was personally known to the high priest (John xviii. 15),