Acts 1:15

καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ταύταις : St. Luke often employs such notes of time, used indefinitely like similar expressions in Hebrew e.g., 1 Samuel 28:1, both in his Gospel and in Acts. Friedrich, p. 9, Lekebusch, p. 53. ἀναστὰς : it is very characteristic of St. Luke to add a participle to a finite verb indicating the posture or position of the speaker. This word is found in St. Luke's Gospel seventeen times, and in Acts nineteen times, only twice in Matthew, six or seven times in Mark; cf. also his use of σταθείς, three times in Gospel, six times in Acts, but not at all in the other Evangelists. Πέτρος : that St. Peter should be the spokesman is only what we should naturally expect from his previous position among the Twelve, but, as St. Chrysostom observes, he does everything with the common consent, nothing imperiously. The best fruits of his repentance are here seen in the fulfilment of his commission to strengthen his brethren. ἐν μέσῳ : another favourite expression of St. Luke both in his Gospel and in the Acts, in the former eight times, in the latter five times (four times in St. Matthew, twice in St. Mark). Blass compares the Hebrew בְּתוֹךְ, Grammatik des N. G., p. 126, and in loco. μαθητῶν : Blass retains and contends that ἀδελφ. has arisen from either Acts 1:14 or Acts 1:16; but there is strong critical authority for the latter word; cf. Acts 6:1. In LXX it is used in three senses; a brother and a neighbour, Leviticus 19:17; a member of the same nation, Exodus 2:14; Deuteronomy 15:3. In the N.T. it is used in these three senses, and also in the sense of fellow-Christians, who are looked upon as forming one family. The transition is easily seen: (1) member of the same family; (2) of the same community (national), of the same community (spiritual). Kennedy, Sources of N.T. Greek, pp. 95, 96. On its use in religious associations in Egypt see Deissmann, Bibelstudien, i., 82, 140, 209. τε : here for the first time solitarium. On the frequent recurrence of this word in Acts in all parts, as compared with other books of the N.T., see Blass, Grammatik des N. G., pp. 257, 258. ὀνομάτων : R.V., “persons”. Lightfoot compares the use of the word in Revelation 3:4; Revelation 11:13 (so too Wendt), where the word is used to signify any persons without distinction of sex, so that the word may have been used here to include the women also. But he considers that it rather means men as distinct from women, and so, as he says, the Syriac and Arabic understand it here. Its use in the sense of persons reckoned up by name is Hebraistic שֵׁמוֹת LXX, Numbers 1:2; Numbers 1:18; Numbers 1:20; Numbers 3:40; Numbers 3:43; Numbers 26:53 (Grimm-Thayer, sub v.), but see also for a similar use on the Egyptian papyri, Deissmann, Neue Bibelstudien, p. 24 (1897). ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ, “ gathered together,” R.V.; cf. Matthew 22:34; Luke 17:35; Acts 2:1; Acts 2:44; Acts 2:47 (so W.H [105], R.V., see in loco, Wendt, Weiss), 1 Corinthians 11:20; 1 Corinthians 14:23. Holtzmann, in loco, describes it as always local, and it is no doubt so used in most of the above passages, as also in LXX Psalms 2:2 (cf. Acts 4:26), 2 Samuel 2:13; Malachi 3:1; Malachi 3:1, Sus. Acts 1:14, and in classical Greek. But when we remember the stress laid by St. Luke in the opening Chapter s of the Acts upon the unanimity of the believers, it is not unlikely that he should use the phrase, at all events in Acts 2:44; Acts 2:47, with this deeper thought of unity of purpose and devotion underlying the words, even if we cannot render the phrase in each passage in Acts with Rendall (Acts, p. 34), “with one mind,” “of one mind”. ὡς ἑκατὸν εἴκοσιν. Both Wendt and Feine reject the view that the number is merely mythical (Baur, Zeller, Overbeck, Weizsäcker), and would rather see in it a definite piece of information which St. Luke had gained. It is quite beside the mark to suppose that St. Luke only used this particular number because it represented the Apostles multiplied by 10, or 40 multiplied by 3. If he had wished to emphasise the number as a number, why introduce the ὡς ?

[105] Westcott and Hort's The New Testament in Greek: Critical Text and Notes.