Acts 1:8

ἔσεσθέ μου μάρτυρες, “my witnesses,” R.V., reading μου instead of μοι, not only witnesses to the facts of their Lord's life, cf. Acts 1:22; Acts 10:39, but also His witnesses, His by a direct personal relationship; Luke 24:48 simply speaks of a testimony to the facts. ἔν τε Ἱερουσαλὴμ κ. τ. λ.: St. Luke on other occasions, as here, distinguishes Jerusalem as a district separate from all the rest of Judæa (cf. Luke 5:17; Acts 10:39), a proof of intimate acquaintance with the Rabbinical phraseology of the time, according to Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life, pp. 17, 73. In this verse, see Introduction, the keynote is struck of the contents of the whole book, and the great divisions of the Acts are marked, see, e.g., Blass, p. 12 in Prologue to Acts Jerusalem, 1 7; Judæa, Acts 9:32; Acts 12:19; Samaria, 8; and if it appears somewhat strained to see in St. Paul's preaching in Rome a witness to “the utmost parts of the earth,” it is noteworthy that in Psalms of Solomon, Acts 8:16, we read of Pompey that he came ἀπʼ ἐσχάτου τῆς γῆς, i.e., Rome the same phrase as in Acts 1:8. This verse affords a good illustration of the subjective element which characterises the partition theories of Spitta, Jüngst, Clemen and others. Spitta would omit the whole verse from his sources A and, and considers it as an interpolation by the author of Acts; but, as Hilgenfeld points out, the verse is entirely in its place, and it forms the best answer to the “particularism” of the disciples, from which their question in Acts 1:6 shows that they were not yet free. Feine would omit the words ἕως ἐσχάτου τῆς γῆς because nothing in the conduct of the early Church, as it is described to us in the Jewish-Christian source, Acts 1-12, points to any knowledge of such a commission from the Risen Christ. Jüngst disagrees with both Spitta and Feine, and thinks that the hand of the redactor is visible in prominence given to the little Samaria.