Acts 1:3

τεσσεράκοντα is the spelling of אAB and other authorities.

3. μετὰ τὸ παθεῖν αὐτόν, after He had suffered. The death is included with the other forms of the passion.

ἐν πολλοῖς τεκμηρίοις. This use of ἐν for expressing the means by which anything is done, is from a translation of the Hebrew בְּ = in. Thus the LXX. have (Ecclesiastes 9:15) καὶ διασώσῃ αὐτὸς τὴν πόλιν ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ αὐτοῦ.

A τεκμήριον is such an evidence as to remove all doubt. It is explained by Hesychius as σημεῖον�. See also Aristot. Rhet. i. 2. So 3Ma 3:24, καὶ τεκμηρίοις καλῶς πεπεισμένοι. The proofs which Christ gave of His true resurrection were His speaking, walking and eating with His disciples on several occasions after His resurrection, and giving to Thomas and the rest the clearest demonstration that He was with them in the same real body as before His death (Luke 24:39; Luke 24:43; John 20:27; John 21:13). As the verity of the Resurrection would be the basis of all the Apostolic teaching, it was necessary for the Twelve who were to be His witnesses to have every doubt removed.

δι' ἡμερῶν. The preposition intimates that the appearances of Jesus to His disciples happened from time to time during the forty days, a force which is scarcely to be gathered from A.V. So Chrysostom who remarks οὐκ εἶπεν τεσσεράκοντα ἡμέρας�' ἡμερῶν τεσσεράκοντα, ἐφίστατο γὰρ καὶ�.

The period of forty days is only mentioned here, and it has been alleged as a discrepancy between St Luke’s Gospel and the Acts that the former (Luke 24) represents the Ascension as taking place on the same day as the Resurrection. It needs very little examination to disperse such an idea. The two disciples there mentioned (Luke 24:13) were at Emmaus ‘towards evening’ on the day of the Resurrection. They came that night to Jerusalem and told what they had seen. But after this has been stated, the chapter is broken up at Luke 24:36 (which a comparison with John (John 20:26-28) shews to be an account of what took place eight days after the Resurrection), and again at Luke 24:44 and Luke 24:50, into three distinct sections, with no necessary marks of time to connect them. And in the midst of the whole we are told that Christ opened the minds of His disciples that they should understand the Scriptures. No reasonable person can suppose that all this was done in one day. Beside which the objectors prove too much, for according to their reasoning the Ascension must have taken place at night, after the two disciples had returned from Emmaus to Jerusalem.

ὀπτανόμενος. A rare word. It is used Tob 12:19 by the angel Raphael, πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας ὠπτανόμην ὑμῖν, and in the LXX. of 1 Kings 8:8 about the staves on which the ark was carried, and which when it rested in the Most Holy place were not seen outside.

βασιλ. τοῦ θεοῦ. The more frequently used phrase is βασιλ. τῶν οὐρανῶν. Here the meaning is, the new society which was to be founded in Christ’s name, and in which all members were to be His soldiers and servants and to bear His name. On the nature of the intercourse between Christ and His disciples during this period, see John 20:21; Matthew 28:20; Mark 16:15-16; Luke 24:45. They received their solemn commission, and were made to understand the Scriptures, and also were comforted by the promise of the Lord’s constant presence to aid them in their great work.