The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 2Stokes, George Thomas
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 2
Stokes, George Thomas
Bible. Acts -- Commentaries; Bible. Acts -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
We have now arrived at another crisis in the history of the early
Church of Christ. The Day of Pentecost, the conversion of Saul of
Tarsus, the call of Cornelius, and the foundation of the Gentile
Church of Antioch are, if we are to pick and choose amid the events
related by St. Luke, the turning-points of the earliest ecclesiastical
history. The conversion of St. Paul is placed by St. Luke before the
conversion of Cornelius, and is closely connected with it. Let us then
inquire by what events St. Luke unites the two. German commentators of
the modern school, who are nothing unless they are original, have not
been willing to allow that St. Luke's narrative is continuous. They
have assigned various dates to the conversion of Cornelius. Some have
made it precede the conversion of St. Paul, others have fixed it to
the time of Paul's sojourn in Arabia, and so on, without any other
solid reasons than what their own fancies suggest. I prefer, however,
to think that St. Luke's narrative follows the great broad outlines of
the Christian story, and sets forth the events of the time in a
divinely ordered sequence. At any rate I prefer to follow the course
of events as the narrative suggests them, till I see some good reason
to think otherwise. I do not think that the mere fact that the sacred
writer states events in a certain order is a sufficient reason to
think that the true order must have been quite a different one. Taking
them in this light they yield themselves very naturally to the work of
an expositor. Let us reflect then upon that sequence as here set forth
for us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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