Acts 15:40

Π. δὲ ἐπιλεξ. Σ.: not in the place of Mark, but in the place of Barnabas, Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 171; having chosen, i.e., for himself: sibi eligere; only in N.T. in this sense, but in classical Greek and in LXX, 1 Samuel 2:28 A, 2 Samuel 10:9 R, Sir 6:18, Esther 9:16; Esther 9:16 1Ma 1:63 R, Acts 5:17, etc.; “elegit ut socium, non ut ministrum” (Blass). If Silas had not returned to Jerusalem, but had remained in Antioch (see above on Acts 15:35), he had doubtless recommended himself to Paul by some special proof of fitness for dealing sympathetically with the relations of the Jewish Christians and the Gentile converts. This sympathy on the part of Silas would be the more marked and significant as he was himself almost certainly a Hebrew; otherwise we cannot account for his high position in the Jerusalem Church, Acts 15:22, although his Roman citizenship is implied in Acts 16:37; perhaps this latter fact may account for his freedom from narrow Jewish prejudices. If we may identify, as we reasonably may, the Silas of Acts with the Silas (Silvanus) of the Epistles, 2 Corinthians 1:19 1 Thessalonians 1:1, 2 Thessalonians 1:1; 1 Peter 5:12, the last mention of him by St. Peter becomes very suggestive. For St. Peter's First Epistle contains the names of the two men, Mark and Silvanus, who had originally been members of the Jerusalem Church, Acts 12:12; Acts 15:22, and moreover the two oldest of St. Paul's associates, whose brotherly Christian concord had been broken for the time (when Paul chose the latter in the place of Barnabas, and rejected Mark's services altogether), but who are now both found at St. Peter's side in Rome (assuming that Babylon is Rome), evidently at one with him and with each other; the one the bearer of a letter, the other the sender of greetings, to Pauline Churches. If St. Paul had passed to his rest, and the leader had thus changed, the teaching was the same, as the names of Silvanus and Mark assure us, and St. Peter takes up and carries on the work of the Apostle of the Gentiles, see Dr. Swete, u. s., pp. 87, 88. ἐξῆλθε, cf. Luke 9:6; Luke 9:3 John, Acts 15:7, where the word is used of going forth for missionary work. παραδοθεὶς, cf. Acts 14:26. Possibly we may infer that the Church took Paul's view of the point at issue between himself and Barnabas, but on the other hand we cannot prove this, because the writer's thoughts are so specially fixed upon Paul as the great and chief worker in the organisation and unification of the Church.