Acts 17:4

προσεκληρώθησαν : “there were in addition gathered to them” (Ramsay), giving the verb a passive meaning answering to its form; or “these were allotted to them, associated with them, as disciples [by God],” cf. Ephesians 1:11. The verb is often used in Philo, also found in Plutarch, Lucian, but only here in N.T. Mr. Rendall, while pointing out that the A.V. and R.V. “consorted” gives the impression of outward association only, regards the passive aorist as a middle in meaning, and renders “threw in their lot with Paul and Silas”. According to A.V. and R.V., W. H., Weiss, and Hort, Judaistic Christianity, p. 89, two classes seem to be mentioned besides the Jews, viz., devout Greeks, and some of the chief women. According, however, to Ramsay, comparing A and (see p. 235, St. Paul), we have three classes besides the Jews, viz., proselytes, Greeks, chief women (added as a climax), see critical note, but also McGiffert, Apostolic Age, p. 247. The difficulty in T.R. and authorities first mentioned is that their rendering restricts St. Paul's work not only to three Sabbaths or weeks, but to the synagogue and its worshippers, whereas from 1 Thessalonians 1:9; 1 Thessalonians 2:14, it would appear that the Church contained a large number of converted heathens. McGiffert thinks it possible that St. Luke may have only recorded the least important of Paul's labours, just as he only mentions his work in three Macedonian towns, whereas he may easily have laboured over a wider area, 1 Thessalonians 1:7; but see Paley, Horæ Paulinæ, ix., 6, and on the reading, Zahn, Einleitung, i., p. 152. In any case it would seem that a small minority of Jews is contrasted with a large number of born Gentiles, so that the Thessalonian Church may have been spoken of by St. Paul as one of Gentile Christians, who had been opposed not only to Christianity, but earlier still to Judaism, 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10. γυν. τε τῶν πρώτων οὐκ ὀλίγαι : here, as at Philippi and Berœa, the three Macedonian towns, the prominence assigned to women quite in accordance with what we know from other sources; see above. The mention both here and in Acts 17:12 that the women were the leading high-born women intimates that the poorer women would follow the men of the lower orders, Acts 17:5. Dr. Hort regards the women here as the Jewish wives of heathen men of distinction, as in Acts 13:50, Judaistic Christianity, p. 89, but in Acts 13:50 the opposition to the Apostles proceeds from these women of the higher classes, and it seems much more likely that those mentioned here were Macedonian women.