Acts 9:10

Ἀνανίας : nomen et omen, “Jehovah is gracious” (cf. Acts 22:12). No doubt a Jewish Christian (he is supposed by some, as by St. Augustine, to have been the presbyter to whose care the Church at Damascus was committed). For more details and traditions concerning him, see Dr. James, “Ananias,” Hastings' B.D., and Felten, in loco. The objections raised against the historical character of the meeting between Ananias and Saul, by Baur, Zeller, Over-beck, are considered by Wendt as quite insufficient. Weizsäcker regards the narrative of the blindness and its cure by Ananias as transparently symbolical, and adds that in any case it is suggestive that Paul, Galatians 4:15, seems, at least in later days, to have had a severe ailment in his eyes (see however on this point Acts 9:9 above). But the weakness, if it existed, might have been caused by the previous blindness at Damascus, and this suggestion, if it is needed, has at all events more probability than the supposition that the narrative in the text was due to the fact that in after years Saul's eyes were affected! (so Weizsäcker, Apostolic Age, i., 72). Zeller indeed admits, Acts, i., 289, E.T., that the connection of Saul with Ananias, “irrespective of the visions and miracles,” may have been historical, and he falls back upon Schneckenburger's theory that the author of Acts had a special aim in view in introducing a man so avowedly pious in the law (Acts 22:12) to introduce Paul to Christianity. But Schneckenburger does not seem to deny the main fact of the meeting between the two men (Ueber den Zweck der Apostelgeschichte, pp. 168, 169), and St. Paul would scarcely have spoken as he did later (Acts 22:12) before a Jewish crowd, in a speech delivered when the capital was full of pilgrims from all parts, and at a time when the constant communication between Damascus and Jerusalem would have exposed him to instant refutation, had his statements with regard to Ananias been incorrect. It is evident that the supernatural element in the narrative is what really lay at the root of Zeller's objections. ὁ Κύριος, i.e., Jesus, as is evident from a comparison of Acts 9:13-14; Acts 9:17. ἐν ὁράματι : critical objections have been raised by Baur and others against the double vision narrated here of Saul and Ananias, as against the double vision of Cornelius and St. Peter in Acts 10:3; Acts 10:11, but see Lumby's note, in loco, and reference to Conybeare and Howson, quoted also by Felten. The idea of the older rationalists that Saul and Ananias had previously been friends, and that thus the coincidence of their visions may be accounted for, is justly regarded by Wendt as entirely arbitrary. The vision, as narrated by Luke, is evidently regarded as something objective, cf. Acts 9:10; Acts 9:13.