Acts 5:21

ὑπὸ τὸν ὄρθρον, “about day-break,” R.V., i.e., without delay they obeyed the angel's command (Weiss). The words may also indicate the customary usage of Palestine where the heat was great in the daytime. The people rose early and came to our Lord to hear Him, Luke 21:38 (John 8:2). ὑπὸ = sub, circa (of time), so in classical Greek, Blass, Grammatik des N. G., p. 132. The first sacrifice took place in the Temple very early, Edersheim, Temple and its Services, p. 132, and it may be that the Apostles went to catch the people at the hour of their early devotions (Plumptre). ὑπό is used nowhere else in the N.T. with an accusative in this sense, cf. Tob 7:11,, al; ὑπὸ τὴν νύκτα, 3Ma 5:2 παραγενόμενος : having come, i.e., to the place where the Sadducees met, not merely pleonastic; the verb may fairly be regarded as characteristic of St. Luke in both his writings it occurs eight times in his Gospel and thirty in the Acts, and frequently absolutely as here elsewhere in N.T. only eight or nine times, frequent in LXX. τὸ συνέδριον καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν γερουσίαν : does γερουσία represent an assembly or body in addition to the συνέδριον, or do the two words represent the same Court? The word γερ. appears nowhere else in the N.T., but in the LXX it is used in several places of the Jewish Sanhedrim, 1Ma 12:6, 2MMalachi 1:10; 2Ma 4:44; 2Ma 11:27, Judges 4:8; Judges 14:4; Judges 15:8. In the N.T. the Sanhedrim is also called πρεσβυτέριον, Luke 22:66; Acts 22:5. If the two words denote the same body καὶ must be regarded as merely explicative (so Wendt as against Meyer) to emphasise the solemn importance and representative nature of the assembly (so Grimm-Thayer to signify the full Sanhedrim sub v. γερ. and so apparently Blass). If we adopt Rendall's view καί may still be explicative, but in another way, specifying the comprehensive character of this meeting as compared with the hasty and informal gathering in Acts 4:5-6 (cf. Kuinoel's view, in loco). The difficulty has caused others to suggest that γερ. refers to men of age and experience who were asked to join the Council as assessors, or to some other assembly larger than the Sanhedrim and only summoned on special occasions. For the former view, Lumby and Plumptre (see also Page's note) refer to Mishna, Joma, i., 1, where mention is made of “the chamber of the assessors,” parhedrin = πάρεδροι. Further we may note, Schürer, Jewish People, div. ii., vol. i., p. 172, E.T., in a note on this passage points out that as there can be no doubt as to the identity of the two conceptions συνέδριον and γερουσία (so too Zöckler and Weiss, in loco), καί must be taken as explanatory, or St. Luke makes a mistake in assuming that the συνέδριον was of a less comprehensive character than the γερουσία, “the Sanhedrin and all the elders of the people together”. Schürer prefers the latter alternative, but the former may reasonably be maintained not only from the Greek text but also because St. Luke's information admittedly derived from a Jewish-Christian source is not likely to have been inaccurate. Hilgenfeld agrees with Weiss that in the source the O.T. expression γερουσία, Exodus 3:16; Exodus 4:29; Exodus 12:21, stood alone, but that the reviser prefixed the usual expression συνέδριον which in Acts 5:27; Acts 5:34 is found without any addition. On “Synhedrion,” see Hamburger, Real-Encyclopädie des Judentums, ii., 8, 1149, and “Aelteste,” i., 1, pp. 59, 60, and O. Holtzmann, Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, pp. 175, 176 (1895). δεσμωτήριον, Acts 16:26; Thuc. vi. 60 and LXX, Genesis 39:20-23; Genesis 40:3-5. On the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrim and its right to order arrests by its own officers, and to dispose of cases not involving capital punishment, Schürer, Jewish People, div. ii., vol. i., 187, 188, E.T., O. Holtzmann, u. s., p. 173.