Acts 2:9-11

The list which follows has been described as showing the trained hand of the historian, whilst it has also been regarded as a distinctly popular utterance in Greek style (Ramsay, Church in the Roman Empire, p. 149; but see also Rendall, Acts, Introd., p. 13). But, as Dean Plumptre well remarks, the omission of many countries which one might have expected shows that the list was not a made up list after the event, but that St. Luke had accurately mentioned the nations present at the Feast. The reference throughout is of course to Jews of the Dispersion, and Schürer (see too Schöttgen) well parallels the description given here of the extent of the Diaspora with the description in Agrippa's letter to the Emperor Caligula given by Philo (Legat. ad Gaium, 36. Mang., ii., 587). All commentators seem to be agreed in regarding the list as framed to some extent on geographical lines, beginning from Parthia the furthest east. Mr. Page holds that the countries named may be regarded as grouped not only geographically but historically. Of the Jews of the Dispersion there were four classes: (1) Eastern or Babylonian Jews, corresponding in the list to Parthians, Medes, Elamites; (2) Syrian Jews, corresponding to Judæa, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia; (3) Egyptian Jews, corresponding to Egypt and the parts of Libya over against Cyrene; (4) Roman Jews. (1) Parthia, mentioned here only in the N.T., is placed first, not only because of the vast extent of its empire from India to the Tigris, but because it then was the only power which had tried issues with Rome and had not been defeated, “Parthia” B.D. (Rawlinson). In Mesopotamia, Elam, and Babylonia were to be found the descendants of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes and of the kingdom of Judah, transported thither by the Assyrians and Chaldeans, now and until the reign of Trajan the subjects of the Parthians, but always of political importance to Rome from their position on the eastern borders of the Empire (Schürer, ubi supra, div. ii., vol. ii., pp. 223, 224 E.T.). At the head of (2), Ἰουδαίαν is placed by Mr. Page, i.e., at the head of the group with which in his view it is geographically connected. Of Asia, as of Syria, it could be said that Jews dwelt in large numbers in every city, and the statement that Jews had settled in the most distant parts of Pontus is abundantly confirmed by the Jewish inscriptions in the Greek language found in the Crimea. Seleucus Nicator granted to the Jews in Syria and Asia the same privileges as those bestowed upon his Greek and Macedonian subjects (Jos., Ant., xii., 31); and to Antiochus the Great was due the removal of two thousand Jewish families from Mesopotamia and Babylonia to Lydia and Phrygia (Schürer, l. c., and “Antiochus III.,” B.D. 2; Jos., Ant., xii., 3, 4). Mr. Page uses the word Ἰουδαία as equivalent to the land of the Jews, i.e., Palestine and perhaps also to some part of Syria. In the former sense the word could undoubtedly be employed (Hamburger, “Judâa,” Real-Encyclopädie des Judentums, i., 5; so too by classical writers and by Strabo, “Judæa,” B.D.). But it is very doubtful how far the term can be extended to include any part of Syria, although Josephus (B.J., iii., 3, 5) speaks of the maritime places of Judæa extending as far as Ptolemais. It may well be that Syria was regarded as a kind of outer Palestine, intermediate between it and heathendom (Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life, pp. 16 19, 71, 73). St. Jerome reads Syria instead of Judæa, a reading to which Blass apparently inclines. Tertullian conjectured Armenia, c. Jude 1:7, and Idumæa (so again Spitta), Bithynia and India have been proposed. It is often very difficult to say exactly what is meant by Asia, whether the term refers to the entire Roman province, which had been greatly increased in the first century B.C. since its formation in 133 B.C., or whether the word is used in its popular sense, as denoting the Ægean coast lands and excluding Phrygia. Here the term is used with the latter signification (Ramsay, Church in the Roman Empire, p. 150, and also “Asia” in Hastings, B.D.). At the head of (3) stands Egypt, where the Jewish Dispersion, especially in Alexandria, played so important a part in the history of civilisation. The greatest prosperity of the Jews in Egypt began with Alexander the Great, but long before his time, in the seventh century B.C., Jewish immigrants were in the country (Schürer, ubi supra, pp. 226, 227, and “Alexandria,” B.D. 2). From Egypt the Dispersion penetrated further westward (Schürer, u. s., pp. 230, 231, and note), and in Libya Cyrenaica or Pentapolitana, the modern Tripoli, the Jews were very numerous; cf. for their history in Cyrene 1Ma 15:23; 2Ma 2:23; Jos., Ant., xvi., 6, 1, 5, and Acts 6:9; Acts 11:30; Acts 13:1; Schürer, u. s., p. 232, and Merivale, Romans under the Empire, pp. 364, 365. The expression used here, τὰ μέρη τῆς Λ. τῆς κατὰ Κ., affords a striking parallel to that used by Dio Cassius, ἡ πρὸς Κυρήνην Λιβύη, liii., 12; cf. also Jos., Ant., xvi., 16; “Cyrene,” B.D. 2, and Hastings' B.D. In (4) we have οἱ ἐπιδ. Ῥωμαῖοι. There is no ground for supposing that any Jews dwelt permanently in Rome before the time of Pompey, although their first appearance there dates from the days of the Maccabees (1Ma 8:17; 1Ma 14:24; 1Ma 15:15 ff.). Of the numerous Jewish families brought to Rome by Pompey many regained their freedom, and settled beyond the Tiber as a regular Jewish community with the rights of Roman citizenship. In 19 A.D., however, the whole Jewish population was banished from the imperial city, Jos., Ant., xviii., 3, 5; but after the overthrow of Sejanus it may be safely assumed that Tiberius allowed their return to Rome (Schürer, u. s., p. 232 ff.). οἱ ἐπιδημοῦντες Ῥωμαῖοι, “Sojourners from Rome,” R.V., i.e., the Jews who live at Rome as sojourners Roman Jews. Others take ἐπιδ. as referring to the Roman Jews who were making a temporary sojourn in Jerusalem for the Feast, or for some other purpose, the word being thus in a certain degree opposed to the κατοικοῦντες (of permanent dwelling) in Acts 2:5. Others again apparently take the expression as describing Roman Jews who, born in Rome, had taken up their dwelling in Jerusalem, and who are thus distinguished from those Jews who, born in Jerusalem, were Romans by right of Roman citizenship. The only other passage in which ἐπιδημοῦντες occurs is Acts 17:21 (but cf. Acts 18:27, [120] and [121] (Blass)), and it is there used of the ξένοι sojourning in Athens, and so probably thus making a temporary sojourn, or who were not Athenians by birth or citizenship, as distinct from the regular inhabitants of Athens. Cf. Athenæus, viii., p. 361 F. οἱ Ῥώμην κατοικοῦντες, καὶ οἱ ἐνεπιδημοῦντες τῇ πόλει, which passage shows that ἐπιδ. “minus significat quam κατοικεῖν ” (Blass), and other instances in Wetstein. Hilgenfeld, whose pages contain a long discussion of recent views of the words in question, argues that according to what precedes we should expect καὶ οἱ κατοικοῦντες Ῥώμην, and according to what follows we should expect simply Ῥωμαῖοι, and he solves the difficulty by the arbitrary method of omitting καὶ οἱ ἐπιδ. before Ῥωμαῖοι, and Ἰουδ. τε καὶ προσήλυτοι after it, Zeitschrift für wissenschaft. Theol., p. 93 ff. (1895); see further Actus Apost., p. 260, 1899. Ἰουδαῖοί τε καὶ προσήλυτοι. Not only would St. Luke in writing to a Roman convert of social rank like Theophilus be likely to mention the presence of Roman Jews at the first Christian Pentecost, but he would also emphasise the fact that they were not only Jews, or of Jewish origin, but that proselytes from heathendom were also included (Felten, Belser). In thus explaining the words Felten refers them, with Erasmus and Grotius, to οἱ ἐπιδ. Ῥωμαῖοι only, whilst Overbeck, Weiss, Holtzmann, Wendt, Belser, so Page, Hackett, refer them to the whole of the preceding catalogue. It is evident that Schürer takes the same view, for in speaking of the large offerings contributed by proselytes to the Temple at Jerusalem he mentions that in stating the number of Jews of every nationality living in Jerusalem the Acts does not forget to mention the proselytes along with the Jews, Acts 2:10 (u. s., p. 307).

[120] Codex Claromontanus (sæc. vi.), a Græco-Latin MS. at Paris, edited by Tischendorf in 1852.

[121] R(omana), in Blass, a first rough copy of St. Luke.