Acts 14:3

ἱκανὸν μὲν οὖν χ. οὖν : as a result from the two previous verses, the accession to their numbers and the disaffection. Blass sees in the aorists ἐπήγ. and ἐκάκ. a proof that the disaffected Jews succeeded in their attempts, and he asks if this was so, how were the Apostles able to remain? The answer is to be found, he thinks, in, see above, so Hilgenfeld, who holds that this reading makes it conceivable how Paul and Barnabas could continue their work. On ἱκανός with χρόνος, peculiar to St. Luke, see p. 215. Ramsay sees the same force in the aorists, and therefore Acts 14:3 seems so disconnected that he can only regard it as an early gloss similar to many which have crept into the Bezan text. He thus inclines to adopt here Spitta's hypothesis, and to regard Acts 14:1-2; Acts 14:4-7 as a primitive document. The Bezan text is to him simply an attempt to remedy the discrepancy which was felt to exist between Acts 14:2-3, and it presupposes two tumults: one in Acts 14:2, and the other in Acts 14:4-5. But there seems nothing unnatural in taking οὖν as marking a result from the events of the two previous verses, not from the second alone, or in the extended stay of the Apostles in the divided city. (Wendt (1899) supposes that in the original source Acts 14:3 preceded Acts 14:2, which makes the sequence quite easy. Clemen is much more drastic in his methods, and refers Acts 14:2 and Acts 14:4-6 a to his Redactor Antijudaicus.) παῤῥησ.: speaking boldly in spite of the opposition of the Jews, see above on the verb, p. 242. ἐπὶ, cf. Acts 4:17-18 (elsewhere with ἐν), the Lord being the ground and support of their preaching; Calvin notes that the words may mean that they spoke boldly in the cause of the Lord, or that relying on His grace they took courage, but that both meanings really run into each other. τῷ Κυρίῳ : difficult to decide whether the reference is to Jesus; Nösgen takes it so, not only on account of St. Luke's usual way of giving Him this title, but also because the Acts speak expressly of the miracles of the Apostles as works of Christ, Acts 3:16, cf. Acts 4:30. On the other hand Meyer-Wendt appeals to Acts 4:29; Acts 20:24; Acts 20:32 (but for last passage see var. lect.), Hebrews 2:4.