Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Acts 1:19

καὶ γνωστὸν … πᾶσιν τοῖς κατοικοῦσιν Ἱερουσ.: the words have been taken to support the view that we have here a parenthesis containing the notice of St. Luke, but if St. Peter was speaking rhetorically he might easily express himself so. But many critics, who refuse to see in the whole of the two verses any parenthetical remarks of the historian, adopt the view that τῇ διαλέκτῳ αὐτῶν and τοῦτʼ ἔστιν χωρίον αἵματος are explanations introduced by St. Luke, who could trust to his Gentile readers to distinguish between his words and those of St. Peter (Wendt, Holtzmann, Zöckler, Nösgen, Jüngst. Matthias). τῇ διαλέκτῳ : only in Acts in the N.T., where it is used six times in all parts; it may mean dialect or language, but here it is used in the latter sense (R.V.) to distinguish Aramaic from Greek (cf. its use in Polybius). αὐτῶν, i.e., the dwellers of Jerusalem, who spoke Aramaic unless the whole expression is used rhetorically, it would seem that it contains the words, not of St. Peter, who himself spoke Aramaic, but of the author (see Blass, in loco). Ἀκελδαμά : the Aramaic of the Field of Blood would be חֲקַל דְּמָא, and it is possible that the χ may be added to represent in some way the guttural [108], just as Σιράχ = סירא, cf. Blass, in loco, and Grammatik des N. G., p. 13. W.H [109] (so Blass) read Ἁκελδαμάχ (and Ἀχελδαμάχ, Tisch. and Treg.); see also on the word Winer-Schmiedel, pp. 60 and 63. A new derivation has been proposed by Klostermann, Probleme in Aposteltexte, p. 6 ff., which has gained considerable attention (cf. Holtzmann, Wendt, Felten, Zöckler, in loco), viz. : דְּמַךְ = κοιμᾶσθαι, so that the word = κοιμητήριον, cf. Matthew 27:8. This is the derivation preferred by Wendt, and it is very tempting, but see also Enc. Bibl., I., 32, 1899, sub v.

[108] Codex Sinaiticus (sæc. iv.), now at St. Petersburg, published in facsimile type by its discoverer, Tischendorf, in 1862.

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

It is true that the two accounts in St. Matthew and St. Luke give two reasons for the name Field of Blood. But why should there not be two reasons? If the traitor in the agony of his remorse rushed from the Temple into the valley of Hinnom, and across the valley to “the potter's field” of Jeremiah, the old name of the potter's field might easily become changed in the popular language into that of “field of blood,” whilst the reason given by St. Matthew for the name might still hold good, since the blood-money, which by a fiction of law was still considered to belong to Judas, was employed for the purchase of the accursed spot as a burial ground for strangers. See Edersheim, Jesus the Messiah, ii., 574, 575. Whatever may be alleged as to the growth of popular fancy and tradition in the later account in Acts of the death of Judas, it cannot be said to contrast unfavourably with the details given by Papias, Fragment, 18, which Blass describes as “insulsissima et fœdissima”.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Acts 1:19

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