Acts 11:4

ἀρξ. δὲ ὁ Π. “But Peter began, and expounded the matter”: ἀρξ. may be pleonastic, Acts 1:4, cf. καθεξῆς, or may be used graphically, or because the reproaches of οἱ ἐκ περιτ. gave the first incentive to St. Peter's recital. καθ. only in Luke, Gospel and Acts, see Acts 3:24. ἐξετίθετο, Acts 18:26; Acts 28:23, Jos., Ant., i., 12, 2, so also in Polyb., x., 9, 3. Perhaps used here by St. Luke from its use by Dioscorides; familiar word to him also as a physician, see Vogel, p. 17. Evidently St. Luke by the two accounts attaches great significance to this first reception, exceptional case as it was, of a Gentile proselyte like Cornelius into the Christian Church, but it was an isolated case, and moreover a case within Palestine, not beyond its borders, so that the great questions of a mission to the Gentiles of the heathen world, and of the conditions for their reception as Christians, were not matter for consideration as afterwards in chap. 15, see Wendt, edition 1899, p. 211; Hort, Ecclesia, pp. 58, 59; and see below on Acts 11:12.