‘he would therefore address not as µαθηταί but as ἀδελφοί and ἅγιοι They were still µαθηταί, yet not of man but of the Lord (only in one passage in Acts, and that a doubtful one, ix. 43, is the word µαθηταί or μαθητής used of any human teacher), and the word was still true of them with that significance, and is still used up to a period subsequent (we may well believe) to the writing of several of Paul’s Epistles, Acts xxi. 16. How the word left its impress upon the thought of the Church, in the claim of the disciple to be as his Master, is ‘touchingly evidenced by the expressions of St. Ign., Ephes. i. 2; Magn., ix., 23 Rom. iv. 2; Tral., v., 2 (St. Polyc., Martyr, xvii., 3, where the word is applied to the martyrs as disciples of the Lord, and the prayer is offered: ὧν γένοιτο καὶ ἡμᾶς συγκοινωνούς τε καὶ συμμαθητὰς γενέσθαι). — γογγυσ- pos and γογγύζειν are both used by St. Luke (cf. Luke v. 30), by St. John, and also by St. Paul, Phil. ii. 14, and 1 Cor. x. 1Ο, the noun also by St. Peter, i. 4,9. The noun is found seven times in the LXX of Israel in the wilderness (cf. 1 Cor. x. 10); so in Phil. ii. 14 it is probable that the same passage, Exod. xvi. 7, was in the Apostle’s mind, as in the next verse he quotes from the Song of Moses, Deut. xxxii. 5, LXX; so γόγγυσις is also found in LXX with the same mean- ing, Numb. xiv. 27. yoyyvopds is also found in Wisd. i. to, Ecclus. xlvi. 7, with reference to Numb. xiv. 26, 27, and twice in Psalms of Solomon v. 15, xvi. 11. In Attic Greek τονθυρισµός would be used (so τονθρίζω and τονθυρίζω). Phrynichus brands the other forms as Ionian, but Dr. Kennedy maintains that γογγυσµός and yoyyvfew from their frequent use in the LXX are rather to be classed amongst ‘“‘ vernacular terms” long continued in the speech of the people, from which the LXX drew. Both words are probably onomatopoetic.—Kennedy, Sources of N. T. Greek, pp. 38-40, 72, 73, 76; seealso Rutherford, New Phrynichus, Ῥ. 463; Deissmann, Bibelstudien, p. 106. Here the word refers rather to indignatio ¢landestina, not to an open murmuring. --Ἑλληνιστῶν. The meaning of the term, which was a matter of conjecture in St. Chrysostom’s day, cannot be said to be decided now (Hort, $udaistic Christianity, p. 48). The verb Ἕλλη- νίζειν, to speak Greek (Xen., Anab., Vii., 3, 25), helps us reasonably to define it as a Greek-speaking Jew (so also Holtzmann and Wendt). The term occurs again in ix, 29 (and xi. 20? see
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in loco), and includes those Jews who had settled in Greek-speaking countries, who spoke the common Greek dialect in place of the vernacular Aramaic current in Palestine, and who would be more or less acquainted with Greek habits of life and education. They were there- fore a class distinguished not by descent but by language. This word ‘‘Grecians”’ (A.V.) was introduced to distinguish them from the Greeks by race, but the rendering “Grecian Jews” (R.V.) makes the dis- tinction much plainer. Thus in the Dispersion “the cultured Jew was not only a Jew but a Greek as well”; he would be obliged from force of circum- stances to adapt himself to his surround- ings more or less, but, even in the more educated, the original Jewish element still predominated in his character ; and if this was true of the higher it was still more true of the lower classes amongst the Hellenists—no adoption of the Greek language as their mode of speech,no sepa- ration of distance from the Holy City, no defections in their observances of the law, or the surrender as unessential of points which the Pharisees deemed vital, could make them forget that they were members of the Commonwealth of Israel, that Palestine was their home, and the Temple their pride, see B.D.?, “« Hellen- ist,” Schirer, ¥ewish People, div. ii., vol. ii., p. 282, E.T.; Hamburger, Real- Encyclopddie des $udentums, ii., 3, ““Griechenthum”’, But bearing this de- scription in mind, we can the more easily understand the conflict with Stephen, and his treatment by those who were probably his fellow-Hellenists. If as a cultured Hellenist St. Stephen’s sym- pathies were wider and his outlook less narrow than that of the orthodox Jew, or of the less educated type of Hellenist, such a man, who died as St. Stephen died with the prayer of Jesus on his lips (see Feine’s remarks), must have so lived in the spirit of his Master’s teaching as to realise that in His Kingdom the old order would change and give place to new. But the same considerations help us to understand the fury aroused by St. Stephen’s attitude, and it is not difficult to imagine the fanatical rage of a people who had nearly risen in insur- rection because Pilate had placed in his palace at Jerusalem some gilt shields in- scribed with the names of heathen gods, against one who without the power of Pilate appeared to advocate a change of the customs which Moses had delivered (see Nésgen, A fpostelgeschichte, p. 69).— “EBpato.—in W.H. with smooth breath--