Acts 6:9

ἀνέστησαν δέ, but there arose. There is a danger that then in the A.V. may be taken as a mark of time = τότε (as in Acts 6:11).

τινες τῶν … καὶ τῶν. As an explanation of occurrence of τῶν twice and no more, it has been suggested that only two synagogues are meant, and that one was that of the Libertini, Cyrenians and Alexandrians, the other that of the Jews from Cilicia and Asia. But the necessity for the repetition of the τῶν arises because while the first three names represent cities, Rome, Cyrene, and Alexandria, the others Cilicia and Asia are names of districts, and as ἀπὸ must therefore be put before Κιλικίας the article is needed before the preposition to make a complete construction, τῶν� standing as if = Κιλίκων.

Render: some of them that were of the synagogue called the synagogue of the Libertines and of the Cyrenians and of the Alexandrians. For the number of synagogues in Jerusalem was very great. The Λιβέρτινοι were most likely the children of some Jews who had been carried captive to Rome by Pompey (B.C. 63), and had been made freedmen (libertini) by their captors, and after their return to Jerusalem had formed one congregation and used one synagogue specially. There is an interesting illustration of this severance of congregations among the Jews from a like cause in the description of the modern Jewish communities in Malabar and Cochin. It is in a MS. in the Cambridge University Library (Oo. 1. 47) which was written in 1781. ‘At this time are found in their dwelling-places about forty white householders, and in all the other places are black Jews found, and their forefathers were the slaves of the white Jews, and now the black Jews, as found in all the places, are about five hundred householders, and they have ten synagogues, while the white Jews have only one. And the white Jews dwell all together and their ritual is distinct from that of the black Jews, and they will not count them [the black Jews] among the ten [necessary for forming a congregation] except a few families of them; but if any of the white Jews go to their [the black Jews’] synagogues, they will admit him as one of the ten.’

On the Jews in Cyrene see note on Acts 2:10.

There were Jews resident in Alexandria in Christ’s time and had been long before, as we learn from the history of the Septuagint version, and in the Talmud we are told they were very numerous. Thus, T. B. Succah 51 b, it is said, ‘Rabbi Jehudah said: He that has not seen the amphitheatre at Alexandria (apparently used for the Jewish worship) in Egypt has not seen the glory of Israel. They say it was like a great Basilica with gallery above gallery. Sometimes there were in it double the number of those who went out from Egypt, and there were in it seventy-one seats of gold corresponding to the seventy-one members of the great Sanhedrin, each one of them worth not less than twenty-one myriads of talents of gold, and there was a platform of wood in the midst thereof, and the minister of the synagogue stood upon it with flags in his hand, and when the time [in the service] came that they should answer Amen, then he waved with the flag and all the people answered Amen.’ In spite of the exaggeration of the numbers in this story we may be certain from it that there was a very large Jewish population in Alexandria, and that they were likely to have a separate synagogue in Jerusalem. For another portion of this story see note on Acts 18:3. See also Joseph. Ant. XIV. 7, § 2 and XIV. 10, § 1.

τῶν�. Cilicia was at the S.E. corner of Asia Minor. One of its principal towns was Tarsus, the birthplace of St Paul, and there were no doubt many other Jews there, descendants of those Jews whom Antiochus the Great introduced into Asia Minor (Joseph. Ant. XII. 3. 4), two thousand families of whom he placed there as well-disposed guardians of the country. St Paul himself may have been one of these.

Ἀσίας. See note on Acts 2:9.

συνζητοῦντες, disputing. The word is used of the captious questionings of the Pharisees (Mark 8:11) and of the scribes (Mark 9:14) with Jesus and His disciples.