Acts 11:30

ὃ καὶ ἐποίησαν κ. τ. λ.: a question arises as to whether this took place during, or at a later date than, Herod's persecution in 44 A.D. the year of his death. Bishop Lightfoot (with whom Dr. Sanday and Dr. Hort substantially agree) maintains that Barnabas and Saul went up to Jerusalem in the early months of 44, during Herod's persecution, deposited their διακονία with the elders, and returned without delay. If we ask why “elders” are mentioned, and not Apostles, the probability is suggested that the Apostles had fled from Jerusalem and were in hiding. Against this view Ramsay strongly protests, not only on account of the part assigned to the leading Apostles, but also because of the meaning which he attaches to the διακονία of Barnabas and Saul (see on Acts 12:25). The elders, not Apostles, are mentioned because the embassy was of a purely business kind, and it was not fit that the Apostles should serve tables. Moreover, Ramsay places the visit of Barnabas and Saul to Jerusalem in 45, or preferably in 46, at the commencement of the great famine in Judæa not in 44, but in 45. Still, as Dr. Sanday urges, the entire omission of any reference to the Apostles is strange (cf. Blass on Acts 11:30; Acts 12:17, who holds that the Apostles had fled), especially as elsewhere Apostles and elders are constantly bracketed together as a single body (Acts 15:2; Acts 15:4; Acts 15:6; Acts 15:22-23; Acts 16:4, cf. Acts 21:18). Nor does it follow that because James, presumably “the brother of the Lord,” is mentioned as remaining in Jerusalem during the persecution (but see Lightfoot, Gal., p. 127, note), which his reputation for sanctity amongst his countrymen might have enabled him to do, that the other Apostles could have done so with equal safety. But Ramsay at all events relieves us from the difficulty involved in the entrance of Paul into Jerusalem at a time of persecution, and the more so in view of the previous plots against his life, a difficulty which is quite unsatisfactorily met by supposing that Paul did not enter the city at all for some unknown reasons, or more unsatisfactorily still by attributing to the author of Acts a mistake in asserting that any visit of Paul to Jerusalem was made at this time. On the chronological order involved in accordance with the two views mentioned, see Ramsay, St. Paul, pp. 48 ff., 68, 69; Lightfoot, Gal., p. 124, note; and, as space forbids more, for the whole question Expositor for February and March, 1896; Lightfoot, Gal., p. 123 ff.; Hort, Judaistic Christianity, p. 61, and Ecclesia, p. 62; Wendt, p. 265 (1888) and p. 218 (1899). τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους, see previous verse. It is also noticeable that St. Luke gives no account of the appointment of the elders; he takes it for granted. These Christian elders are therefore in all probability no new kind of officers, but a continuation in the Christian Church of the office of the זְקֵנִים, πρεσβύτεροι, to whom probably the government of the Synagogue was assigned hence we may account for St. Luke's silence (Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood, p. 141; Hort, Ecclesia, p. 62; Lightfoot, Phil., pp. 191 193; “Bishop” (Gwatkin), Hastings' B.D.). In the Christian συναγωγή (James 2:2) there would naturally be elders occupying a position of trust and authority. There is certainly no reason to regard them as the Seven under another name (so Zeller, Ritschl), although it is quite conceivable that if the Seven represented the Hellenists, the elders may have been already in existence as representing the Hebrew part of the Church. But there is need to guard against the exaggeration of the Jewish nature of the office in question. In the N.T. we find mention of elders, not merely so on account of age, not merely as administrative and disciplinary officers (Hatch, Bampton Lectures, pp. 58, 61), as in a Jewish synagogue, but as officers of the Christian Church with spiritual functions, cf. James 5:14; 1 Peter 5:2; Acts 20:17; Titus 1:5, and also 1 Thessalonians 5:12-14; Hebrews 13:7 (see Mayor, St. James, p. cxxviii; Gore, Church and the Ministry, pp. 253, 263, and note). At the same time there is nothing to surprise us in the fact that the administration of alms should be connected in loco with the office of elders. If they were representing the Apostles at the time in Jerusalem, it is what we should expect, since the organisation of almsgiving remained part of the Apostolic office, Galatians 2:10; 2 Corinthians 8, etc.; and if in a passage from Polycarp (quoted by Dr. Hatch) we find the two connected the presbyterate and what looks like the administration of alms, Polycarp, Phil., vi., xi. this again need not surprise us, since not only in the N.T., but from the passage referred to in Polycarp, it is evident that the elders, whilst they exercised judicial and administrative functions, exercised also spiritual gifts, and discharged the office of teachers, functions to which there was nothing analogous in the Jewish presbyters (see Gore, u. s., note, and Gwatkin, u. s., p. 302). To turn back the sheep that are gone astray (ἐπιστρέφοντες τὰ ἀποπεπλανημένα) is one of the first commands laid by Polycarp in his Epistle upon the Christian Presbyters (vi., quoted by Hatch), and from this alone it would appear that a familiar title in the Jewish Church passed into the Church of Christ, gaining therein a new and spiritual power. See further on Acts 20:17, and for the use of the word in inscriptions, Deissmann, Bibelstudien, p. 153, and Neue Bibelstudien, p. 160.