Acts 2:46

ὁμοθυμαδόν, see note on Acts 1:14. προσκαρτεροῦντες, cf. Acts 1:14. ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ : we are not told how far this participation in the Temple extended, and mention is only made in one place, in Acts 21:26, of any kind of connection between the Apostles or any other Christians and any kind of sacrificial act. But that one peculiar incident may imply that similar acts were not uncommon, and their omission by the Christians at Jerusalem might well have led to an open breach between them and their Jewish countrymen (Hort, Judaistic Christianity, pp. 44, 45). No doubt the Apostles would recommend their teaching to the people by devout attendance at the Temple, cf. Acts 3:1; Acts 5:20; Acts 5:42, like other Jews. κατʼ οἶκον, R.V. “at home” (so in A.V. margin). But all other English versions except Genevan render the words “from house to house” (Vulgate, circa domos), and this latter rendering is quite possible, cf. Luke 8:1; Acts 15:21; Acts 20:20. If we interpret the words of the meeting of the believers in a private house (privatim in contrast to the ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ, palam), cf. Romans 16:3; Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15; Philemon 1:2, it does not follow that only one house is here meant, as Wendt and Weiss suppose by referring to Acts 1:13 (see on the other hand Blass, Holtzmann, Zöckler, Spitta, Hort) there may well have been private houses open to the disciples, e.g., the house of John Mark, cf. Dr. Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life, pp. 259, 260. Hilgenfeld, with Overbeck, rejects the explanation given on the ground that for this κατʼ οἴκους, or κατὰ τοὺς οἴκους, would be required an argument which does not however get over the fact that κατά may be used distributively with the singular according to him all is in order if Acts 2:42 follows immediately upon 41 a, i.e., he drops 41 b altogether, and proceeds to omit also the whole of Acts 2:43; Acts 2:45. κλῶντες ἄρτον : the question has been raised as to whether this expression has the same meaning here as in Acts 2:42, or whether it is used here of merely ordinary meals. The additional words μετελάμβανον τροφῆς have been taken to support this latter view, but on the other hand if the two expressions are almost synonymous, it is difficult to see why the former κλῶντες ἄρτον should have been introduced here at all, cf. Knabenbauer in loco. It is not satisfactory to lay all the stress upon the omission of the article before ἄρτον, and to explain the expression of ordinary daily meals, an interpretation adopted even by the Romanist Beelen and others. In the Didache 1 the expression κλάσατε ἄρτον, chap. iv. 1, certainly refers to the Eucharist, and in the earlier chap. ix, where the word κλάσμα occurs twice in the sense of broken bread, it can scarcely refer to anything less than the Agape (Salmon, Introd., p. 565, and Gore, The Church and the Ministry, p. 414, on the value of the Eucharistic teaching in the Didache 1). μετελ.: the imperf. denotes a customary act, the meaning of the verb with the gen [133] as here is frequently found in classical Greek; cf. LXX, Wis 18:9, 4Ma 8:8, AR., and Acts 16:18. ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει : exulting, bounding joy; Vulgate, exultatione, “extreme joy,” Grimm, used by St. Luke twice in his Gospel, Luke 1:14; Luke 1:44 only twice elsewhere in the N.T., Hebrews 1:9, quotation, and in Jude 1:24. The word, though not occurring in classical Greek, was a favourite in the LXX, where it occurs no less than eighteen times in the Psalms alone. This “gladness” is full of significance it is connected with the birth of the forerunner by the angel's message to Zacharias, Luke 1:14; the cognate verb ἀγαλλιάω, - άομαι, common to St. Luke's Gospel and the Acts, denotes the spiritual and exultant joy with which the Church age after age has rejoiced in the Song of the Incarnation, Luke 1:47. ἀφελότητι καρδίας : rightly derived from a priv. and φελλεύς, stony ground = a smooth soil, free from stones (but see Zöckler, in loco, who derives ἀφέλεια, the noun in use in Greek writers, from φέλα, πέλλα, Macedon. a stone). The word itself does not occur elsewhere, but ἀφέλεια, ἀφελής, ἀφελῶς are all found (Wetstein), and just as the adj [134] ἀφελής signified a man ἁπλοῦς ἐν τῷ βίῳ, so the noun here used might well be taken as equivalent to ἁπλότης (Overbeck) “in simplicity of heart,” simplicitate, Bengel. Wendt compares the words of Demosthenes, ἀφελὴς καὶ παρρησίας μεστός.

[133] genitive case.

[134] adjective.