Acts 1:1

The former treatise In the original we have the superlative adjective used, but the idiom which speaks of the firstof two is common to Greek with many other languages. An example is found 1 Corinthians 14:30. So Cicero, de Inventione, in his second book (chap, iii.) calls the former book primus liber.

treatise The original (λόγος) indicates rather an inartistic narrative than a history. It is a book more like a piece of Herodotus than Thucydides.

have I made Better, I made. The time is indefinite, and we have no warrant in the text for that closer union of the two books, in point of date, which is made by the language of the A. V.

Theophilus Nothing is known of the person to whom St Luke addresses both his Gospel and the Acts, but the adjective "most excellent" applied to him in Luke 1:3 is the same which is used in addressing Felix in a letter and in a speech (Acts 23:26; Acts 24:3), and Festus (Acts 26:25) in a speech; from which we are perhaps warranted in concluding that Theophilus was a person of rank, and it may be a Roman officer. Josephus uses the same word in addressing Epaphroditus, to whom he dedicates the account of his life (Vit. Josephi, ad fin.). The suggestion that Theophilus (lover of God) is a name adopted by the writer to indicate any believer, is improbable. Such personification is unlike the rest of Scripture, and is not supported by evidence.

began for the Gospel is not a history of all that Jesus did, but only an account of the foundations which He laid and on which the Church should afterwards be built So this book is still an account of what the Lord does and teaches from heaven.

to do and teach As in the Gospel (Luke 24:19) the disciples call Jesus "a prophet mighty in deedand in word." The acts and life spake first, and then the tongue.