Acts 11:25

Luke gives no reason why Barnabas goes to seek Saul, but Barnabas who had already vouched for Saul's sincerity before the Church of Jerusalem, Acts 9:27, could scarcely be ignorant that the sphere of his friend's future work was to be the Gentile world. In Acts 9:30 Saul was sent away to Tarsus, and now Barnabas goes to Tarsus to seek him; each statement is the complement of the other, and a long period intervenes not marked by any critical event in Saul's history. So also Paul's own statement, Galatians 1:21-22, marks the same period, and the two writers complete each other. Ramsay, St. Paul, pp. 45, 46, on Luke's style and reading in [244] above. ἀναζητὴσαι, cf. Luke 2:44-45, nowhere else in N.T., a word therefore not only common to, but peculiar to Luke's writings. ἀνά : giving idea of thoroughness; it was not known at what precise spot Saul was prosecuting his work, so the word implies effort or thoroughness in the search; εὑρὼν implies the same uncertainty. In LXX, cf. Job 3:4; Job 10:6 2Ma 13:21. Calvin comments on the fresh proof of the “simplicitas” of Barnabas; he might have retained the chief place at Antioch, but he goes for Paul: “videmus ergo ut sui oblitus nihil aliud spectat, nisi ut emineat unus Christus”.

[244] Codex Claromontanus (sæc. vi.), a Græco-Latin MS. at Paris, edited by Tischendorf in 1852.