Acts 8:25

οἱ μὲν οὖν : the μὲν οὖν and δέ in Acts 8:26 may connect the return of the party to Jerusalem and the following instructions to Philip for his journey, and so enable us to gather for a certainty that Philip returned to Jerusalem with the Apostles, and received there his further directions from the Lord; see Rendall's Appendix on μὲν οὖν, Acts, p. 164, but cf. on the other hand, Belser, Beiträge, pp. 51, 52. On the frequent and characteristic use of μὲν οὖν in Luke, see above on Acts 1:6, etc. ὑπέστρεψαν : if we read the imperfect, we have the two verbs in the verse in the same tense, and the sense would be that the Apostles did not return at once to Jerusalem, but started on their return (imperfect), and preached to the Samaritan villages on the way (as Belser also allows) the τε closely unites the two verbs (Weiss). The verb is characteristic of St. Luke: in his Gospel twenty-one or twenty-two times; in Acts, eleven or twelve times; in the other Evangelists, only once, Mark 15:40, and this doubtful; only three times in rest of N.T. (Lekebusch, Friedrich).