Acts 9:29

συνεζήτει, cf. Acts 6:9. πρὸς τοὺς Ἑλλην., of whom Saul himself was one; see critical notes. Saul's visit was a short one (Galatians 1:18), and although we must not limit his opportunities of disputation to the two Sabbaths with Blass (note the two imperfects), yet it is evident that the Hellenists were at once enraged against the deserter from their ranks. There is no contradiction with Acts 22:17, as Zeller and Overbeck maintained it is rather a mark of truth that Luke gives the outward impulse, and Paul the inner ground (Hackett, Lightfoot, Lumby); but see on the other hand Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 62, against the identification of Acts 22:17 with Paul's first visit; according to Ramsay, Acts 22:17-18 refer to the close of the Apostle's second visit. Wendt (1899) still identifies Acts 22:18 with the passage before us, Acts 9:29; in seventh edition he speaks more fully of the fulfilment of the negative prophecy in Acts 22:18, by the positive fact here narrated. ἐπεχείρουν : only used by St. Luke; St. Luke 1:1; Acts 19:13; it is used in same sense in classical Greek; and it also occurs in Esther 9:25 1Es 1:28, 2Ma 2:29; 2Ma 7:19; 2Ma 9:2, etc., and 3Ma 7:5, where it occurs as here with ἀνελεῖν (see also below), and for other instances cf. Hatch and Redpath. The word was frequently employed in medical language, sometimes in its literal sense “to apply the hand to,” but generally as in N.T. Both Hippocrates and Galen use the verb as St. Luke does, with γράφειν ἐπειχείρησαν γράφειν. Hobart, pp. 87 and 210, points out that Galen also employs the verb with ἀνελεῖν, as here. It is true that the word is also used in the same sense by Josephus, c. Apion, ii., with συγγράφειν, but the medical use of the term is so striking in Hippocrates that its use here is noted by J. Weiss, Evangelium des Lukas, p. i., as a probable reminiscence by the writer, and still more positively so by Zahn, Einleitung in das N. T., ii., p. 384 (1899).