Acts 1:26

καὶ ἔδωκαν κλήρους αὐτῶν, “they gave forth their lots,” A.V. But R.V. reads αὐτοῖς, “they gave lots for them”. R.V. margin, “unto them”. It is difficult to decide whether the expression means that they gave lots unto the candidates themselves or whether they cast lots for them i.e., on their behalf, or to see which of the two would be selected. How the lot was decided we cannot positively say. According to Hamburger (Real-Encyclopädie des Judentums, i., 5, p. 723) the Bible does not tell us, as the expressions used point sometimes to a casting, sometimes to a drawing out, of the lots; cf. Proverbs 16:33 : “Quo modo et ratione uti sunt Apostoli incertum est. Certum est Deum per earn declarasse Mathiam tum dirigendo sortem ut caderet in Mathiam juxta illud Proverbs 16:33 ” (Corn. à Lapide). For the expression cf. Leviticus 16:8. Hebraismus (Wetstein), so Blass. καὶ ἔπεσεν, i.e., through shaking the vessel, Jonah 1:7; cf. Livy, xxiii., 3; so in Homer and Sophocles πάλλειν, cf. Josephus, Ant., vi., 5. συγκατεψηφίσθη : only here in N.T. “he was numbered with the eleven Apostles,” i.e., as the twelfth. The verb is used in the middle voice for condemning with others, Plut., Them., 21, but as it occurs nowhere else we have no parallels to its use here. Grimm explains it “deponendo (κατά) in urnam calculo, i.e., suffragando assigno (alicui) locum inter (σύν)”. But here it is used rather as an equivalent of συγκαταριθμεῖσθαι; cf. Acts 1:17 (and also Acts 19:19), (Blass and Wendt, in loco) = ἐναρίθμιος, συμψηφισθείς, καταριθμηθείς, Hesychius. Wendt as against Meyer maintains that it is not proved that recourse was never again had to lots, because no other instance of such an appeal is recorded in Acts. But it is most significant that this one instance should be recorded between the departure of the Lord and the outpouring of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, and that after Pentecost no further reference is made to such a mode of decision. Cf., e.g., Acts 10:19; Acts 16:6. With regard to the historical character of the election of Matthias, Wendt sees no ground to doubt it in the main, although he is not prepared to vouch for all the details, but he finds no reason to place such an event at a later date of the Church's history, as Zeller proposed. To question the validity of the appointment is quite unreasonable, as not only is it presupposed in Acts 2:14; Acts 6:2, but even the way in which both St. Paul (1 Corinthians 15:5) and the Apocalypse (Acts 21:14) employ the number twelve in a technical sense of the Twelve Apostles, makes the after choice of Matthias as here described very probable (so Overbeck, in loco). No mention is made of the laying on of hands, but “non dicuntur manus novo Apostolo impositæ; erat enim prorsus immediate constitutus,” Bengel. See also on Acts 1:25, and Acts 13:3.

Ascension of our Lord. Friedrich in his Das Lucasevangelium, p. 47 ff., discusses not only similarity of words and phrases, but similarity of contents in St. Luke's writings. With reference to the latter, he examines the two accounts of the Ascension as given in St. Luke's Gospel and in the Acts. There are, he notes, four points of difference (the same four in fact as are mentioned by Zeller, Acts of the Apostles, i., 166, E. T.): (1) Bethany as the place of the Ascension, Luke 24:30; Acts 1:12, the Mount of Olives; (2) the time of the Ascension; according to Acts the event falls on the fortieth day after the Resurrection, Acts 1:3; according to the Gospel on the Resurrection day itself; (3) the words of Jesus before the Ascension are not quite the same in the two narratives; (4) in the Gospel the words appear to be spoken in Jerusalem, in the Acts at the place of the Ascension. Friedrich points out what Zeller fully admitted, that (1) has no importance, for Bethany lay on the Mount of Olives, and the neighbourhood of Bethany might be described quite correctly as ὄρος ἐλαιῶνος; (3) is not of any great importance (as Zeller also admitted), since Luke 24:47-49 and Acts 1:4-8 agree in the main. With regard to (4), Friedrich is again in agreement with Zeller in holding that the difficulty might easily be solved by supposing some slight inaccuracy, or that the words in question were uttered on the way from Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives; but he agrees also with Zeller in maintaining that the time of the Ascension as given in Luke's Gospel and in Acts constitutes the only definite contradiction between the two writings. But even this difficulty presents itself to Friedrich as by no means insuperable, since the author has not attempted to avoid apparent contradictions in other places in the Acts, and therefore he need not have felt himself called upon to do so in the passage before us, where the book seems at variance with his Gospel (see pp. 48, 49).

But Friedrich proceeds to emphasise the many points in which the history of the Ascension in Acts reminds us of the close of the Gospel (see also Zeller, u. s., ii., pp. 226, 227, E.T., and also Feine). Only St. Luke knows of the command of Jesus, that the Apostles should not leave Jerusalem, and of the promise of the Holy Spirit associated with it, Luke 24:49, and Acts 1:4-8. So also Luke 24:47 reminds us unmistakably of Acts 1:8; also Luke 24:52 and Acts 1:12; Luke 24:53 and Acts 1:14 (Acts 2:14) (cf. also Acts 1:5 and Luke 3:16). But there is no need to adopt Friedrich's defence of the supposed contradiction with regard to the time of the Ascension. Certainly in the Gospel of St. Luke nothing is said of any interval between the Resurrection and the Ascension, but it is incredible that “the author can mean that late at night, Luke 3:29; Luke 3:33, Jesus led the disciples out to Bethany and ascended in the dark!” Plummer, St. Luke, p. 569, see also Felten, Apostelgeschichte, p. 59, and Blass, Acta Apostolorum, p. 44. It is of course possible that St. Luke may have gained his information as to the interval of the forty days between the writing of his two works, but however this may be (cf. Plummer, but against this view Zöckler, Apostelgeschichte, p. 173), it becomes very improbable that even if a tradition existed that the Ascension took place on the evening of the Resurrection, and that Luke afterwards in Acts followed a new and more trustworthy account (so Wendt), that the Evangelist, the disciple of St. Paul, who must have been acquainted with the continuous series of the appearances of the Risen Christ in 1 Corinthians 15, should have favoured such a tradition for a moment (see Zöckler, u. s.). On the undue stress laid by Harnack upon the famous passage in Barnabas, Epist., xv., see Dr. Swete, The Apostle's Creed, p. 68, Plummer, u. s., p. 564, and on this point and also the later tradition of a lengthy interval, Zöckler, u. s. For the early testimony to the fact of the Ascension in the Apostolic writings, and for the impossibility of accounting for the belief in the fact either from O.T. precedents or from pagan myths, see Zahn, Das Apostolische Symbolum, pp. 76 78, and Witness of the Epistles (Longmans), p. 400 ff. The view of Steinneyer that St. Luke gives us a full account of the Ascension in the Acts rather than in his Gospel, because he felt that the true position of such an event was to emphasise it more as the beginning of a new period than as a conclusion of the Gospel history, Die Auferstehungsgeschichte des Herrn, pp. 226, 227, deserves attention, and may be fitly compared with W.H [113], Notes on Select Readings, p. 73.

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