Acts 2:11

Κρῆτες καὶ Ἄραβες : both names seem to have been added to the list as an after-thought. Even if we cannot accept Nösgen's idea that St. Luke is repeating verbatim the account which he had received orally from an eyewitness who had forgotten the Arabians and Cretans in going through the list geographically, yet the introduction of the two names in no apparent connection with the rest ought to show us that we are not dealing with an artificial list, but with a genuine record of the different nations represented at the Feast. Belser, who endorses this view, supposes that St. Luke obtained his information from an eyewitness who added the Cretans and Arabians supplementarily, just as a person might easily forget one or two names in going through a long list of representative nations at a festival. It is possible, as Belser suggests, that the Cretans and Arabians were thinly represented at the Pentecost, although the notices in Josephus and Philo's letter mentioned above point to a large Jewish population in Crete. The special mention of the Cretans is strikingly in accordance with the statement of the Jewish envoys to Caligula, viz., that all the more noted islands of the Mediterranean, including Crete, were full of Jews, “Crete,” B.D., 2 and Schürer, u. s., p. 232. In R.V. “Cretans”; which marks the fact that the Greek Κρῆτες is a dissyllable; in A.V. “Cretes” this is easily forgotten (cf. Titus 1:12). μεγαλεῖα only found here in N.T.; the reading of T.R., Luke 1:49, cannot be supported; cf. Psalms 70 (71):19, where the word occurs in LXX. (Hebrew, גְּדלוֹת) Sir 17:9; Sir 18:4; Sir 18:33, Sir 42:21, 3Ma 7:22, R. The word is found in Josephus, and also in classical Greek: used here not only of the Resurrection of the Lord (Grotius), but of all that the prophets had foretold, of all that Christ had done and the Holy Ghost had conferred.