Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Acts 13:9

καὶ before ἀτενίσας omitted with אABCL. Not represented in Vulg.

9. Σαῦλος δέ, ὁ καὶ Παῦλος, but Saul, who also is called Paul. In spite of Elymas, the proconsul had been determined in his purpose, and Saul had come before him. At this point we first meet the name by which the great Apostle is best known throughout the Christian Church, and many reasons have been given why he assumed this name, and why at this time. Some have thought that the name was adopted from the proconsul’s, his first convert of distinction, but this is utterly alien to all we know of the character of St Paul, with his sole glory in the cross of Christ. Far more likely is he to have been attracted to it, if it were not his before, by the meaning of the Latin word (paullus = little, see Ter. And. 1. 5. 31; Adelph. 5. 4. 22), and its fitness to be the name of him who called himself the least of the Apostles. But perhaps he did only what other Jews were in the habit of doing when they went into foreign lands, and chose him a name of some significance (for the Jews were fond of names with a meaning) among those with whom he was about to mix. Dean Howson (Life and Letters of St Paul, I. p. 164) compares Joses—Jason; Hillel—lulus, and probably the similarity of sound did often guide the choice of such a name, and it may have been so with the Apostle’s selection. St Luke, recognizing that the history of St Paul is now to be his chief theme and that the work for which that Apostle was separated was now begun, names him henceforth only by the name which became most current in the Churches.

The article ὁ before καὶ belongs to the understood καλούμενος, and is not to be considered a substitute for the relative.

πλησθεὶς πνεύματος ἁγίου, filled with the Holy Ghost. So we learn that the punishment inflicted on Elymas was dictated to the Apostle by the Spirit, and that he knew, from the inward prompting thereof, what would be the result to the offender.

ἀτενίσας εἰς αὐτὸν εἶπεν, fastened his eyes on him and said. For Elymas was standing by, ready to catch at anything which he could turn to the discredit of the Apostles. This is meant by St Paul’s rebuke of him, as διαστρέφων τὰς ὁδοὺς κυρίου τὰς εὐθείας.

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Acts 13:9

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