Introduction:
| Darby
| Geneva
| Gill
| Jamieson Faussett Brown
| Johnson
| Matthew Henry
| Matthew Henry Concise
| McGarvey Pendleton
| Wesley
| Index
| Bible Gateway |
Chapter 1:
| Darby
| Geneva
| Gill
| Jamieson Faussett Brown
| Johnson
| Matthew Henry
| Matthew Henry Concise
| McGarvey Pendleton
| Wesley
| Index
| Bible Gateway |
Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 John Romans
Introduction to Acts
T
HIS book is to the Gospels what the fruit is to the tree that bears
it. In the Gospels we see the corn of wheat falling into the ground and
dying: in the Acts we see it bringing forth much fruit
(
Joh 12:24).
There we see Christ purchasing the Church with His own blood: here we
see the Church, so purchased, rising into actual existence; first among
the Jews of Palestine, and next among the surrounding Gentiles, until
it gains a footing in the great capital of the ancient world--sweeping
majestically from Jerusalem to Rome. Nor is this book of less value as
an Introduction to the Epistles which follow it, than as a Sequel to
the Gospels which precede it. For without this history the Epistles of
the New Testament--presupposing, as they do, the historical
circumstances of the parties addressed, and deriving from these so much
of their freshness, point, and force--would in no respect be what they
now are, and would in a number of places be scarcely intelligible.
The genuineness, authenticity, and canonical authority of this book
were never called in question within the ancient Church. It stands
immediately after the Gospels, in the catalogues of the
Homologoumena, or universally acknowledged books of the New Testament
(see
Introduction to our larger
Commentary, Vol. V, pp. iv, v). It
was rejected, indeed, by certain heretical sects in the second and
third centuries--by the Ebionites, the Severians (see E
USEBIUS,
Ecclesiastical History, 4.29), the Marcionites, and the Manicheans:
but the totally uncritical character of their objections (see
Introduction above referred to, pp. xiii, xiv) not only deprives them
of all weight, but indirectly shows on what solid grounds the Christian
Church had all along proceeded in recognizing this book.
In our day, however, its authenticity has, like that of all the
leading books of the New Testament, been made the subject of keen and
protracted controversy. D
E
W
ETTE, while admitting Luke to be the author
of the entire work, pronounces the earlier portion of it to have been
drawn up from unreliable sources
(
New-Testament Introduction, 2
a, 2
C). But the Tubingen school,
with B
AUR at their head, have gone much farther. As their fantastic
theory of the post-Joannean date of the Gospels could not pretend even
to a hearing so long as the authenticity of the Acts of the Apostles
remained unshaken, they contend that the earlier portion of this work
can be shown to be unworthy of credit, while the latter portion is in
flat contradiction to the Epistle to the Galatians--which this school
regard as unassailable--and bears internal evidence of being a designed
distortion of facts for the purpose of setting up the catholic form
which Paul gave to Christianity in opposition to the narrow Judaic but
original form of it which Peter preached, and which after the death of
the apostles was held exclusively by the sect of the Ebionites. It is
painful to think that anyone should have spent so many years, and,
aided by learned and acute disciples in different parts of the
argument, should have expended so much learning, research, and
ingenuity in attempting to build up a hypothesis regarding the
origination of the leading books of the New Testament which outrages
all the principles of sober criticism and legitimate evidence. As a
school, this party at length broke up: its head, after living to find
himself the sole defender of the theory as a whole, left this earthly
scene complaining of desertion. While some of his associates have
abandoned such heartless studies altogether for the more congenial
pursuits of philosophy, others have modified their attacks on the
historical truth of the New Testament records, retreating into
positions into which it is not worth while to follow them, while others
still have been gradually approximating to sound principles. The one
compensation for all this mischief is the rich additions to the
apologetical and critical literature of the books of the New Testament,
and the earliest history of the Christian Church, which it has drawn
from the pens of T
HIERSCH,
E
BRARD, and many others. Any allusions
which it may be necessary for us to make to the assertions of this
school will be made in connection with the passages to which they
relate--in Acts, First Corinthians, and Galatians.
The manifest connection between this book and the third Gospel--of
which it professes to be simply the continuation by the same
author--and the striking similarity which marks the style of both
productions, leave no room to doubt that the early Church was right in
ascribing it with one consent to Luke. The difficulty which some
fastidious critics have made about the sources of the earlier portion
of the history has no solid ground. That the historian himself was an
eye-witness of the earliest scenes--as H
UG concludes from the
circumstantiality of the narrative--is altogether improbable: but there
were hundreds of eye-witnesses of some of the scenes, and enough of all
the rest, to give to the historian, partly by oral, partly by written
testimony, all the details which he has embodied so graphically in his
history; and it will appear, we trust, from the commentary, that De
Wette's complaints of confusion, contradiction, and error in this
portion are without foundation. The same critic, and one or two others,
would ascribe to Timothy those later portions of the book in which the
historian speaks in the first person plural--"we"; supposing him to
have taken notes of all that passed under his own eye, which Luke
embodied in his history just as they stood. It is impossible here to
refute this gratuitous hypothesis in detail; but the reader will find
it done by E
BRARD (
The Gospel History, sect. 110, Clark's
translation; sect. 127 of the original work,
Wissenschaftliche Kritik der Evangelische Geschichte, 1850), and by
D
AVIDSON (
Introduction to New Testament, Vol. II, pp. 9-21).
The undesigned coincidences between this History and the Apostolic
Epistles have been brought out and handled, as an argument for the
truth of the facts thus attested, with unrivalled felicity by P
ALEY in his
Horæ Paulinæ, to which
Mr. B
IRKS has made a number of ingenious
additions in his
Horæ Apostolicæ. Exception has been
taken to some of these by J
OWETT (
St. Paul's
Epistles, Vol. I, pp. 108 ff.), not without a measure of reason in
certain cases--for our day, at least--though even he admits that in
this line of evidence the work of P
ALEY, taken as
a whole, is unassailable.
Much has been written about the object of this history. Certainly
"the Acts of the Apostles" are but very partially recorded. But for
this title the historian is not responsible. Between the two
extremes--of supposing that the work has no plan at all, and that it is
constructed on an elaborate and complex plan, we shall probably be as
near the truth as is necessary if we take the design to be to record
the diffusion of Christianity and the rise of the Christian Church,
first among the Jews of Palestine, the seat of the ancient Faith, and
next among the surrounding Gentiles, with Antioch for its headquarters,
until, finally, it is seen waving over imperial Rome, foretokening its
universal triumph. In this view of it, there is no difficulty in
accounting for the almost exclusive place which it gives to the labors
of Peter in the first instance, and the all but entire disappearance
from the history both of him and of the rest of the Twelve after the
great apostle of the Gentiles came upon the stage--like the lesser
lights on the rise of the great luminary.
Introduction:
| Darby
| Geneva
| Gill
| Jamieson Faussett Brown
| Johnson
| Matthew Henry
| Matthew Henry Concise
| McGarvey Pendleton
| Wesley
| Index
| Bible Gateway |
Chapter 1:
| Darby
| Geneva
| Gill
| Jamieson Faussett Brown
| Johnson
| Matthew Henry
| Matthew Henry Concise
| McGarvey Pendleton
| Wesley
| Index
| Bible Gateway |
Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 John Romans
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Joshua
Judges
Ruth
1 Samuel
2 Samuel
1 Kings
2 Kings
1 Chronicles
2 Chronicles
Ezra
Nehemiah
Esther
Job
Psalm
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Lamentations
Ezekiel
Daniel
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Acts
Romans
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
1 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Titus
Philemon
Hebrews
James
1 Peter
2 Peter
1 John
2 John
3 John
Jude
Revelation
