7ο.
541
8. ἐγένετο δὲ τὸν πατέρα τοῦ Ποπλίου πυρετοῖς καὶ] δυσεντερία
συνεχόµενον κατακεῖσθαι' πρὸς ὃν ὁ Παῦλος εἰσελθὼν καὶ προσευξά-
3 ‘ ο) > A 35 oe , 3 ΄ pevos, ἐπιθεὶς τὰς χεῖρας αὐτῷ, ἰάσατο αὐτόν. 9. τούτου οὖν γενοµένου,
καὶ ot λοιποὶ οἱ ἔχοντες ἀσθενείας ἐν
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τη
νήσω προσήρχοντο καὶ
1 For δνσεντεριφ 61, Chrys. have the older fem. form, -1¢, Winer-Schmiedel,
p- 85.
bauer).—avaSeg.: only here of hospitable reception = ὑποδέχεσθαι, xvii. 7; Φιλοφ., 2 Macc. iii. 9, 4 Macc. viii. 5; in the former passage Φιλοφ. ἀποδεχθείς, so in Jos., Ant., xiv., 8, 5, φιλοφ. ὑποδέχεσθαι, and instances in Wetstein, see above on νετ. 2.---ἡμᾶς : some take the word as re- ferring to Paul and his eompanions, Luke and Aristarchus (as it seems to lead on to what follows), perhaps including Julius, whilst others point out that he may have entertained the whole crew for the short space of time mentioned, as the ἡμέρας τρεῖς indicates that the entertain- ment was only provisional; probably he had a large number of slaves (Nésgen, Weiss). Publius may well have been officially responsible for the needs of the Roman soldiers and their prisoners, but Φιλοφ. indicates that the duty was per- formed with generous courtesy.—égéw- σεν: entertained (as his guests), cf. x. 6, 23, etc., Heb. xiii. 2. The traditional site was at Civita Vecchia, the old capital of the island, where St. Paul spent the three months, and another tradition places it on the way from St. Paul’s Bay to the capital.
Ver. 8. Ἠπυρετοῖς: the use of the plural for a fever is peculiar to St. Luke in N.T., and quite medical, Hobart, J. Smith, Zahn (cf. Luke iv. 38, 39); al- though the plural is found in Dem., Lucian in the sense of “intermittent attacks of fever,” but Hobart shows that the term was very common in Hipp., and he also quotes from Aretzus and Galen. Each of the other Evangelists uses πυρετός, but in the singular, never in the plural. The disease was common in Malta (J. Smith and C. and H.).—8vorevreplq, see critical note, “dysentery,” R.V.; ‘Lucas medi- cus morbos accuratius describere solet,”’ Wetstein ; another medical term, peculiar to St. Luke in N.T., often joined with πυρετός by Hippocrates (Hobart, Zahn). —ovvex., cf. Luke iv. 38, συνεχοµένη πυρετῷ µεγάλῳ, where St. Luke not only speaks of πυρ. péyas, where Mat- thew and Mark (viii. 14 and i. 30) have simply πνρετός, but also introduces the term συνεχ. where they have πυρέσ-
σουσα; ἔχεσθαι and σννέχ. are both used by the medical writers as in these passages, although no doubt συνέχεσθαι is sometimes found with a word like νοσήµατι in classical Greek (cf. Grotius, in loco, Hobart, Zahn, Weiss), so in Hippocrates, ὑπὸ δυσεντερίης ἐχομένῳ, and τοῖσιν ὑπὸ τῆς ἠρακλείης νόσον συνεχοµένοισιν ; nine times in St. Luke, elsewhere only three times in N.T., and once in St. Matt. iv. 24, in a way similar to St. Luke, but joined there not only with νόσοις, but with a word (βασάνοις) which the medical writers (so St. Luke) never employ of bodily disease.—iacaro αὐτόν, cf. Mark xvi. 18, the word is more frequently used by the medical writers for “healing”? than any other (Hobart), and it occurs in St. Luke’s writings fourteen times and once figuratively, in St. Matthew four times and once figuratively, once in St. Mark, three times in St. John, once figuratively, and in the rest of the N.T. three times, but in each case figuratively. In answer to the attempts to regard the miraculous element as an addition to the narrative here, as in the previous chapter, it may be sufficient to quote the remarks of Weizsacker : “‘ The stormy voyage and shipwreck form the central point of the narrative: to this is appended the resi- dence at Malta. In the former, Paul reveals himself as a prophet; in the latter, as the possessor of miraculous power. We should make a vast mistake, however, if we were to infer from this that the simple travel-record had here been revised by a writer intent upon artificially glorifying the Apostle as a worker of miracles, The narrative is an indivisible whole; it is impossible to disentangle the mere history of travel from it, or to strip away the miraculous additions,” Apostolic Age, ii., p. 126, E.T.