Acts 13:9

Σαῦλος δέ, ὁ καὶ Παῦλος : since the days of St. Jerome (De Vir. Ill., chap. 6, cf. Aug [257], Confess., viii., 4, etc., cf. amongst moderns Bengel, Olshausen, Ewald, Meyer) it has been thought that there is some connection here emphasised by the writer between the name Sergius Paulus and the assumption of the name Paul by the Apostle at this juncture. (Wendt (1899) inclines to the view that the name Paul was first used in Acts 13:1. See in loco and critical notes.) So too Baur, Zeller, Hausrath, Overbeck, Hilgenfeld are of opinion that Luke intended some reference to the name of the proconsul, although they regard the narrative of his conversion as unhistorical. But Wendt rightly maintains (1899) that the simple ὁ καὶ without the addition of ἀπὸ τότε would not denote the accomplishment of a change of name at this juncture, and that if the change or rather addition of name had been now effected, the mention of it would naturally have followed after the mention of the conversion of the proconsul in Acts 13:13. The connection seemed so strained and artificial to many that they abandoned it, and regarded the collocation of the two names as a mere chance incident, whilst Zöckler (whose note should be consulted, Apostelgeschichte, in loco, second edition), who cannot thus get rid of the striking similarity in the names of the two men, thinks that the narrative of St. Luke is too condensed to enable us fully to solve the connection. But since it was customary for many Jews to bear two names, a Hebrew and a Gentile name, cf. Acts 1:23; Acts 12:25; Acts 13:1; Colossians 4:11, Jos., Ant., xii., 9, 7, and frequent instances in Deissmann, Bibelstudien, pp. 182, 183, cf. Winer-Schmiedel, p. 149 note, it may well be that Luke wished to intimate that if not at this moment, yet during his first missionary journey, when the Apostle definitely entered upon his Gentile missionary labours, he employed not his Jewish but his Gentile name to mark his Apostleship to the Gentile world (“Seit 13. 1. ist der jüdische Jünger Σαῦλος Weltapostel,” Deissmann); by a marvellous stroke of historic brevity the author sets before us the past and the present in the formula ὁ καὶ Π. a simple change in the order of a recurring pair of names: see Ramsay's striking remarks, St. Paul, p. 83 ff., with which however, mutatis mutandis, his more recent remarks, Was Christ born at Bethlehem? p. 54, should be carefully compared. See also Deissmann, u. s., Nösgen, Wendt, Hackett, Felten, and Zöckler, in loco, and McGiffert, Apostolic Age, p. 176. This preference by St. Luke of the Gentile for the Hebrew name has its analogy in St. Paul's own use in his Epistles (and in his preference for Roman provincial names in his geographical references, cf. 1 Corinthians 16:1 2 Corinthians 8:1; 2 Corinthians 9:2; Romans 15:26; Philippians 4:15).

[257] Augustine.