5—6.
171
Τίμωνα καὶ Παρμενᾶν, καὶ Νικόλαον προσήλυτον *Avtioxéa, 6. οὓς
” Ai} ants , Q , 2g ασ έστησαν ἐνώπιον τῶν ἀποστόλων ' καὶ προσευξάµενοι ἐπέθηκαν αὐτοῖς
Gospel, and eight times in the Acts; on his fondness for such words, see p. 73.— πίστεως: not in the lower sense of honesty or truthfulness, but in the higher sense of religious faith, cf. xi. 24, ‘non modo fidelitate sed fide spirituali,”’ Bengel.— Φίλιππον, cf. viii. 5, xxi. 8: we may probably trace his work also along the coasts of Palestine and Pheenicia, cf, Viii. 40, xv. 3, xxl. 3, 7 (Plumptre’s notes on these passages), and no doubt St. Luke would have learnt from him, when he met him at Cesarea, xxi. 8, much that relates to the early history of the Church, Introd., 17. It would appear both in his case and in that of St. Stephen that the duties of the Seven could not have been confined to service of the tables. In the deacons M. Renan saw a proclamation of the truth that social questions should be the first to occupy the attention of man, and the deacons were, for him, the best preachers of Christianity; but we must not forget that they did not preach merely by their method and works of charity, but by a proclamation of a Saviour and by the power of the Holy Ghost. In the reference to Philip in xxi. 8 as simply ‘‘one of the Seven” we may fairly see one of the many proofs of the unity of the authorship of Acts, see Salmon, Introd., chapter xviii., and Lightfoot, “' Acts,”’ B.D.?, and see further, Salmon in the same chapter, on the proof which is afforded in the account of Philip of the antiquity of the Acts ; see below also on xxi, 8.—Ipéxopov: tradition says that he was consecrated by St. Peter Bishop of Nicomedia, and a fabulous biography of John the Evangelist had his name attached to it, as a companion of the Apostle in Asia, and his biographer—but we cannot attach any credence to anysuch professed information ; see Blass, in loco, Hilgenfeld, Zeitschrift fir wissenschaft. Theol., 1895, p. 426; B.D.? iii. sub υ. Of Simon, Parmenas, Nicanor, it cannot be said that anything is known, as is frankly admitted by the Romanist com- mentator Εεἶτεῃ.---Νικόλαον προσήλντον Α.: that the name proselyte is given to him has been held by many to mark him out as the only proselyte among the Seven; otherwise it is difficult to see why he alone is so designated (so Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 375, Lightfoot, Hort, Weiss, Felten, and amongst earlier writers, De Wette and Ewald). No doubt he was a proselyte of the higher and more com-
plete type (a ‘* proselyte of the gate,’’ the lower type—as distinct from a “ proselyte of righteousness’’—is always in Acts φοβούμενος or σεβόμενος τὸν θεόν), but Ramsay sees in his election to office another distinct step in advance: ‘the Church is wider than the pure Jewish race, and the non-Jewish element is raised to official rank,” although, as Ramsay himself points out, there was nothing in this step out of harmony with the principle of the extreme Judaistic party (St. Paul, p. 375, cf. 157). The case of Cornelius was of a different kind, see below on chap. x. But the notice is. all the more interesting because it con- tains the first mention of the Church afterwards so important, the Mother Church of the Gentiles, Antioch in Syria, and this may point to the reason of the description of Nicolaus as a proselyte of Antioch. It was a notice of special interest to St. Luke if his own home was at Antioch, but we cannot say positively that the notice means that Nicolaus was the only proselyte among the Seven. That the Jews were numerous at Antioch and had made many proselytes we learn from Jos., B. F., vii., 3, 3: of the supposed connection between this Nicolaus and the sect of the Nicolaitans, Rev. ii. 6, 14, we may hesitate to say with Blass that it is worthy of no more credit than the notice which attaches to Prochorus, although we may also well hesitate to accept it, but it has been advocated by Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 297, and recently by Zockler, Apostelgeschichte, Ῥ. 199. Zockler goes so far as to see in the list of the Seven a copy of the list of the Apostles, inasmuch as the most dis- tinguished is placed first, the traitor last. But Nicolaus would be fitly placed last if he were the only proselyte. The Patristic evidence in support of the cennection in question is by no means conclusive, see Ritschl, A/ltkatholische Kirche, p. 135 and note (second edition), Felten, Afostelgeschichte, p. 140, and Wendt, in loco, Hilgenfeld, Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaft. Theol., p. 425 (1895). Holtzmann on Rev. ii. 6 holds that the Nicolaitans, who are not to be connec- ted with Nicolaus the deacon, may = symbolically, the Bileamites, ver. 14; so Grimm, sub. ο. Nukodatrys, if we take the latter as coinciding with the Hebrew