Acts 28:22

ἀξιοῦμεν δὲ : “but we think good,” cf. Acts 15:38. They acknowledge that no report had reached them to invalidate the statements which Paul had just made as to the causes of his imprisonment, but (δέ) they would hear not from others, but from himself (παρὰ σοῦ). ἃ φρονεῖς : evidently no reference to any special view of Christianity as characterising St. Paul's own teaching, but a reference to his claim to be imprisoned for the hope of Israel. αἱρ … Christianity was for them only a sect, and therefore they could not understand the Apostle's identification of it with the Jewish national hope. See note on Acts 28:17. γνωστόν … ἡμῖν : if the view is correct that the edict of Claudius, see chap. Acts 18:2, was occasioned by the early preaching of Christianity in Rome, it is possible that the dislocation of the Jewish community then caused may help at all events to explain why the Christian Church in Rome did not grow out of the Jewish synagogue in the capital to the same context as elsewhere, see Sanday and Headlam, Romans, pp. 21, 22. It may no doubt be urged that the Christian Church in Rome was not entirely a heathen-Christian Church, and that, as the names in Romans 16 indicate, it contained a Jewish element. But it is quite conceivable that in the capital, with its two million inhabitants, the Jews, who had only recently returned to the city, should know nothing beyond what is here indicated in such general terms of a poor and obscure sect who dwelt no longer in the Jewish quarter. It is also worthy of consideration that the Jews of Rome, whilst not guilty of any untruth in what they had just said as to their knowledge of the Christian sect, may have expressed themselves in this guarded manner from political reasons. If St. Paul's statement in Acts 28:18 as to the favourable bearing of the Roman authorities towards him was true, it was but natural that the Jews should wish to refrain from hasty or hostile action towards a prisoner who was evidently treated with consideration in his bonds; they would rather act thus than revive an old quarrel which might again lead to their own political insecurity, see especially Lightfoot, Philippians, pp. 15, 16; Felten, in loco; and, further, Rendall, p. 352. Nothing said by the Jews contradicts the existence of a Christian community in Rome, nor is it said that they wished to learn the Christian tenets from Paul, as if they knew nothing of them from their own knowledge, or as if they knew nothing of the causes of the opposition to the Christian faith; motives of curiosity and of policy might well have prompted a desire to hear Paul speak for himself, and with such motives there was apparently mingled a tone of contempt for a sect of which they might fairly say, from the experience of their countrymen, and from their own experience in Rome, πανταχοῦ ἀντιλέγεται : ἀντιλ. Lucan-Pauline; only once elsewhere; cf. John 19:12. See [434] text above.

[434] R(omana), in Blass, a first rough copy of St. Luke.