166
θεωροῦντο ἐν τῇ διακονίᾳ τῇ καθηµερινῇ at χῆραι αὐτῶν.ϊ
2. προσ-
καλεσάμενοι δὲ” οἱ δώδεκα τὸ πλῆθος τῶν μαθητῶν, εἶπον, Οὐκ
1 At end D adds εν ty διακονιᾳ των Έβραιων, according to Flor. οτι εν τ. καθ.
διακ. αι x. των EAX. υπο των διακονων των Εβρ. παρεθεωρ.
Blass in β reads simply
after αι x. αυτων the words υπο των διακ. των Εβραιων. 2 ovy CEHP, Vulg.; δε YB, so Tisch., W.H. text, R.V. marg., Weiss, Wendt;
δη A, so Lach., W.H. marg. Par. ; cf. xxl. 22 (Weiss).
ing, see W.H., Introduction, p. 313, and Winer-Schmiedel, p. 40; here those Jews in Palestine who spoke Aramaic; in the Church at Jerusalem they would probably form a considerable majority, cf. Phil. iii. 5, and Lightfoot’s note. In the N.T. *lovSatos is opposed to Ἕλλην (Rom. i. 16), and “EBpatos to Ἑλληνιστής, Acts vi. 1. Inthe former case the contrast lies in the difference of race and religion ; in the latter in the difference of customs and language. A man might be called ’lov- δαῖος, but he would not be Ἔβραῖος in the N.T. sense unless he retained in speech the Aramaic tongue; the distinction was therefore drawn on the side of lan- guage, a distinction which still survives in our way of speaking of the fewish nation, but of the Hebrew tongue. See Trench, Synonyms, i., p. 156 ff. In the two other passages in which ‘EBp. is used, Phil. iii. 5 and 2 Cor. xi. 22, what- ever difficulties surround them, it is pro- bable that the distinctive force of the word as explained above isimplied. But as within the nation, the distinction is not recognised by later Christian writers, and that it finds no place at all in Jewish writers like Philo and Josephus, or in Greek authors like Plutarch and Paus- anias (Trench, . 5.).---πρὸς, cf. St. Luke ν. 30, ἐγόγγυζον πρὸς 7. μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ. ---παρεθεωροῦντο: not found elsewhere in N.T. and not in LXX, but used in this sense in Dem. (also by Diodorus and Dion. Hal.) = παρορᾶν, Attic : imperfect, denot- ing that the neglect had been going on for some time; how the neglect had arisen we are not told—there is no reason to suppose that there had been previously Palestinian deacons (so Blass in 8, criti- cal notes), for the introduction of such a class of deacons, as Hilgenfeld notes, is something quite new, and does not arise out of anything previously said, although it would seem that in the rapidly growing numbers of the Church the Hebrew Chris- tians regarded their Hellenist fellow- Christians as having only a secondary claim on their care. Possibly the supply for the Hellenists fell short, simply be-
D reads τι ουν εστιν αδελφοι; επισκεψ., so Flor.,
cause the Hebrews were already in posses- sion. The Church had been composed first of Galileans and native Jews resident in Jerusalem, and then there was added a wider circle—Jews of the Dispersion. It is possible to interpret the incident as an indication of what would happen as the feeling between Jew and Hellenist became more bitter, but it is difficult to believe that the Apostles, who shared with St. James of Jerusalem the belief that θρησκεία consisted in visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction, could have acted in a spirit of partiality, so that the neglect, if it was due to them, could be attributed to anything else than to their ignorance of the greatness of the πεεά.---διακονίᾳ, see below on νετ. 2.— καθηµερινῇῃ: not found elsewhere in N.T. or in LXX, only in Judith xii. 15. It is a word only used in Hellenistic Greek, cf. Josephus, Axt., iii., το, 1; but it may be noted that it is also a word frequently employed by medical writers of a class of fevers, etc. See instances in Hobart, ΡΡ. 134, 135, and also in Wetstein, in loco. —ai χῆραι αὐτῶν: not merely a generic term for the poor and needy—under the Mosaic dispensation no legal provision was made for widows, but they would not only receive the privileges belonging to other distressed classes, but also speci- fic regulations protected them — they were commended to the care of the com- munity, and their oppression and neglect were strongly condemned— it is quite possible that the Hellenistic widows had previously been helped from the Temple Treasury, but that now, on their joining the Christian community, this help had ceased, On the care of the widow in the early Church, see James i. 27 (Mayor’s note); Polycarp, Phil., vi., 1, where the presbyters are exhorted to be evo- πλαγχνοι μὴ ἀμελοῦντες χήρας ἢ ὁρ- φανοῦ ἢ πένητος, and cf. iv. 3. he word χήρα occurs no less than nine times in St. Luke’s Gospel, three times in the Acts, but elsewhere in the Evangelists only three times in St. Mark (Matt. xxii. 14, omitted by W.H. and R.V.), and two: