Acts 11:27

Antioch sends relief to Jerusalem. ἐν ταύταις δὲ ταῖς ἡ., cf. Acts 1:15; Acts 6:1. ταύταις emphatic, by its position and also by its significance, days full of importance for Barnabas and Saul, who were still at Antioch (Weiss). προφῆται : the coming of the prophets gave an additional sanction to the work at Antioch. There is no reason in the uncertainty of the dates to suppose that they had been driven from Jerusalem by persecution. For the position of the Christian prophets in the N.T. cf. Acts 13:1, where Barnabas and Saul are spoken of as prophets and teachers; afterwards as Apostles, Acts 14:4; Acts 15:32, where Judas and Silas are described as prophets, having been previously spoken of, Acts 11:22, as ἡγούμενοι amongst the brethren at Jerusalem (while Silas later bears the name of Apostle); cf., further, 1 Corinthians 12:28; 1 Corinthians 14:29-33; 1 Corinthians 14:39; Ephesians 4:11, where in each case the Prophet is placed next to Apostles (although in 1 Cor. he may have been merely a member of a local community), perhaps because “he belonged to the same family as the great prophets of the Old Testament,” for whilst foreknowledge of events was not necessarily implied by the word either in the O.T. or in the N.T., the case of Agabus, both here and in Acts 21:10-11, shows that predictiveness was by no means excluded. The Christian prophets, moreover, as we see them in Acts, combine the duty of “ministering to the Lord” with that of preaching the word; they are not only foretellers, but forth-tellers of God's will, as in the case of a Samuel or an Elijah, Gore, Church and the Ministry, pp. 240, 261, 393, etc.; Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood, p. 160 ff.; and for Sub-Apostolic Age, p. 179 ff.; Bigg, Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles, p. 28 (1898); Harnack, “Apostellehre” in Real-Encyclopädie für Protestant. Theol. (Hauck), p. 716, and see, further, on Acts 13:1.