The Book of the Acts

The first chapter of Acts provides a brief introduction to the narrative of the Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit and its sequel. It deals with two topics: the risen Lord’s conversations with his disciples on the eve of his ascension, and the co-opting of Matthias to fill the vacancy in the apostolate caused by the treachery and death of Judas Iscariot.

1. Prologue (1:1–3)

1The first volume which I wrote,1 Theophilus, was concerned with all that Jesus began to do and teach

2until the day he was taken up, after he had given his commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.2

3It was to them that he presented himself alive after his passion by many compelling tokens: he appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke to them about the kingdom of God.

1–2 Theophilus, to whom the second volume of Luke’s history is here dedicated, is similarly addressed at the beginning of the first volume, where he receives the title “most excellent” (Luke 1:3). There has been much indecisive speculation about him. Some have even suggested that he was no particular individual, but that the name Theophilus—which means “dear to God”—is used here to designate the “Christian reader.” The use of the honorific title “most excellent” makes this improbable. We cannot be sure, however, whether the title “most excellent” is bestowed on Theophilus in a technical sense, indicating his rank, or is given him by way of courtesy.3 Nor is much to be gained by pondering the omission of the title in Acts, as when it is suggested that Theophilus had become a Christian since he received the “first volume” and therefore would no longer expect worldly titles of rank or honor from a fellow-Christian.

Another suggestion is that the name Theophilus masks the identity of some well-known person, such as Titus Flavius Clemens, cousin of the Emperor Domitian.4 Even this is unlikely: Theophilus was a perfectly ordinary personal name, attested from the third century B.C. onward. Despite the evident apologetic motive in Luke’s history, it is equally unlikely that Theophilus was the advocate briefed for Paul’s defense at the hearing of his appeal to Caesar.5 It is quite probable that Theophilus was a representative member of the intelligent middle-class public at Rome whom Luke wished to win over to a less prejudiced and more favorable opinion of Christianity than that which was current among them. This much is certain from the prologue to Luke’s first volume (which serves also as a prologue to the twofold work): that Theophilus had already learned something about the rise and progress of Christianity, and Luke’s aim was to put him in possession of more accurate information than he already had.6

Such dedications were common form in contemporary literary circles. For example, Josephus dedicated his Jewish Antiquities, his Autobiography, and his two volumes Against Apion to a patron named Epaphroditus. At the beginning of the first volume Against Apion, he addresses him as “Epaphroditus, most excellent of men”;7 and he introduces the second volume of the same work with the words: “By means of the former volume, my most honored Epaphroditus,8 I have demonstrated our antiquity.” These opening words are remarkably similar to those of Luke’s second volume.

Luke begins with a brief reference to his former9 volume as an account of “all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up”—or, if we follow the Western text, “until the day when, by the Holy Spirit, he commissioned the apostles whom he had chosen, and charged them to proclaim the gospel.” This exactly summarizes the scope of the Gospel of Luke from 4:1 onward: the commissioning of the apostles is recorded in Luke 24:44–49. The implication of Luke’s words is that his second volume will be an account of what Jesus continued10 to do and teach after his ascension—no longer in visible presence on earth but by his Spirit in his followers. The expression “to do and teach” well sums up the twofold subject matter of all the canonical Gospels: they all record The Work and Words of Jesus (to quote the title of one presentation of their subject matter).11

It was “through the Holy Spirit” that Jesus gave his parting charge to his apostles. Almost invariably12 Luke restricts the designation “apostles” to the twelve men whom Jesus chose at an early stage in his ministry (Luke 6:13–16), except that Judas Iscariot was replaced by Matthias (as we are told later in this chapter). His charge to them made them the chief heralds of the good news which he had brought. The extension of the good news in the power of the Spirit is the theme of Acts. At his baptism Jesus had been “anointed” with the Holy Spirit and power (10:38), and more recently, in Paul’s words, he had been “designated Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). In the Johannine account of the commission laid on his disciples by the risen Christ, he indicated the power by which they were to carry out their commission when he “breathed into them” and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22).13 Luke makes it plain that it is by the power of that same Spirit that all the apostolic acts which he goes on to narrate were performed, so much so that some have suggested, as a theologically more appropriate title for his second volume, The Acts of the Holy Spirit.14

3 Over a period of forty days between his resurrection and ascension Jesus appeared at intervals to his apostles and other followers in a manner which could leave no doubt in their minds that he was really alive again, risen from the dead. The most primitive and comprehensive list of these appearances is that given by Paul in 1 Cor. 15:5–7, although the Gospel narratives indicate that even Paul’s list is not exhaustive. In both parts of Luke’s work the resurrection appearances are confined to Jerusalem and its neighborhood.15

What did Jesus teach them during those days? Many Gnostic schools which flourished in the second century and later claimed that he gave them certain esoteric teaching, not recorded in the canonical literature of the catholic church, of which they themselves were now the custodians and interpreters. Within the frontiers of Christian orthodoxy there was one line of tradition which represented him as giving the apostles instructions about church order.16 But Luke declares that he continued to instruct them on the same subjects as had formed the burden of his teaching before his passion—things relating to the kingdom of God.

From the earliest times in Israel, God was acknowledged as king (cf. Ex. 15:18). His kingship is universal (Ps. 103:19), but is manifested most clearly where men and women recognize it in practice by doing his will. In Old Testament times his kingship was specially manifested on earth in the nation of Israel: to this nation he made known his will and he called it into covenant relationship with himself (cf. Ps. 147:20). When human kings arose over Israel, they were regarded as viceregents of the divine King, representing his sovereignty on earth. With the fall of the monarchy and the end of national independence, there arose a new conception of the kingdom of God as destined to be revealed on earth in its fullness at a later date (cf. Dan. 2:44; 7:13–14). It is in the light of this later conception that we should understand the New Testament teaching about the kingdom of God. Jesus inaugurates the kingdom: it “drew near” with the inception of his public ministry (cf. Mark 1:14–15) and was released in power by his death and exaltation (cf. Mark 9:1). The things relating to the kingdom of God which form the theme of his postresurrection teaching at the beginning of Acts are identical with “the things relating to the Lord Jesus Christ” which form the theme of Paul’s teaching in Rome at the end of the book (28:31). When they told the story of Jesus, the apostles proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God—the same good news as Jesus himself had announced earlier, but now given effective fulfilment by the saving events of his passion and triumph. It may reasonably be concluded that the teaching about the kingdom of God given to the apostles during the forty days was calculated to make plain to them the bearing of these saving events on the message of the kingdom.

Luke supplies one sample of this teaching toward the end of his Gospel, where he shows the risen Lord opening his disciples’ minds to understand the scriptures: “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:45–47). “The kingdom of God is conceived as coming in the events of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and to proclaim these facts, in their proper setting, is to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.”17 These words of C. H. Dodd may be adopted with one qualification: when the apostles proclaimed the good news, they did not stop short at the resurrection and exaltation of Christ, but went on to speak of one further event which would consummate the saving series. Peter told the household of Cornelius how Christ had charged his apostles “to preach to the people and testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead” (10:42). Paul told the Areopagites at Athens that God “has set a day on which he is going to judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has provided a pledge to all, by raising him from the dead” (17:31). This judgment of the world coincides, in the apostolic preaching, with the parousia of Christ, the final and perfect manifestation of the divine kingdom, when every knee will bow at his name and every tongue confess him as Lord (Phil. 2:10–11), when God’s will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:10). At Christ’s first coming the age to come invaded this present age; at his coming in glory the age to come will have altogether superseded this present age.18 Between the two comings the two ages overlap; the people of Christ live temporally in this present age while spiritually they belong to the heavenly kingdom and enjoy by anticipation the life of the age to come. Biblical eschatology is largely, but not completely, “realized”; there remains a future element, to become actual at the parousia. A balanced account of the New Testament presentation of the kingdom of God requires that due regard be paid to this future element as well as to those which have been realized.19

2. The Apostles’ Commission (1:4–8)

4While he was eating with them20 he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem but wait for what the Father had promised. “About this,” he said, “you have heard me speak.

5For John indeed baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days’ time.”

6When they had come together, then, they put this question to him: “Is this the time, Lord, when you are about to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

7“It is not for you,” he replied, “to learn 21 about times or seasons which the Father has reserved under his own control.22

8But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

4 That the risen Christ ate in the presence of his disciples when he appeared to them is stated explicitly in Luke 24:42–43 (cf. Acts 10:41). Plainly his resurrection body had no need of material food and drink for its sustenance. But Luke may imply that he took food in the company of his disciples, not for any personal need of his own, but in order to convince them that he was really present with them and that they were seeing no phantom. There may also be a hint that what he shared with them was a eucharistic meal, a token that the new age had dawned, comparable to his self-disclosure at Emmaus “in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:30–31, 35).23

In the course of these resurrection appearances, Jesus instructed the apostles not to leave Jerusalem until the Father fulfilled his promise to them and they were “clothed with power from on high” (to quote from the parallel narrative of Luke 24:49). He had already told them, he reminded them, of this promised gift. If we ask when and where he had told them of it, the Fourth Evangelist will give us an answer: it was on the night of his betrayal, in the upper room in Jerusalem, after they had celebrated the Last Supper together, before they left the house to cross the Kidron valley and spend the remaining hours on the slope of Olivet. Certainly we have no account of a previous reference by Jesus to the promised Spirit which fits the present allusion so well as the five well-known passages in John 14–16. And it is particularly noteworthy “that the emphasis of these five passages is precisely that which underlies the conception of the Spirit in Acts 1–15.”24

5 This promise, moreover, was foreshadowed by the ministry of John the Baptist.25 To those who came to receive the baptism of repentance at his hands John had said, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I … will baptize you with the Holy Spirit”26 (Luke 3:16 par. Mark 1:8). The time was now drawing very near, said Jesus, when these words of John would be fulfilled: “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days’ time.” According to Old Testament prophecy, the days of fulfilment would be marked by a widespread outpouring of the Spirit of God,27 and John’s baptism in water not only prepared his repentant hearers for the coming judgment but also pointed them on to that spiritual baptism of which the prophets had spoken.

6 These matters had been the subject of conversation between the risen Lord and his disciples from time to time during the forty days. The formula of transition at the beginning of verse 628 suggests that Luke now moves on to the last conversation of all, belonging to the risen Lord’s appearance to them immediately before his ascension.

The apostles evidently maintained their interest in the hope of seeing the kingdom of God realized in the restoration of Israel’s national independence. They had at an earlier date been captivated by the thought that in such a restored order they themselves would have positions of authority (cf. Mark 10:35–45; Luke 22:24–27). So now, hearing their Master speak of the coming gift of the Spirit, the sign of the new age, they asked if this was to be the occasion for restoring Israel’s sovereignty.

7 Jesus’ answer did not take the form of a direct “No.” He told them that the epochs of the fulfilment of the divine purpose29 were matters which lay within the Father’s sole jurisdiction. Similarly, he had assured them on a former occasion that not even the Son knew the day or hour of his parousia; this knowledge was reserved to the Father alone (Mark 13:32). Whatever purposes of his own God might have for the nation of Israel, these were not to be the concern of the messengers of Christ. The kingdom of God which they were commissioned to proclaim was the good news of God’s grace in Christ. Their present question appears to have been the last flicker of their former burning expectation of an imminent theocracy with themselves as its chief executives. From now on they devoted themselves to the proclamation and service of God’s spiritual kingdom, which men and women enter by repentance and faith, and in which chief honor belongs to those who most faithfully follow their Lord in the path of obedience, service, and suffering.

8 Instead of the political power which had once been the object of their ambitions, a power far greater and nobler would be theirs. When the Holy Spirit came upon them, Jesus assured them, they would be vested with heavenly power—that power by which, in the event, their mighty works were accomplished and their preaching made effective. As Jesus had been anointed at his baptism with the Holy Spirit and power, so his followers were now to be similarly anointed and enabled to carry on his work.30 This work would be a work of witness-bearing—a theme which is prominent in the apostolic preaching throughout Acts.31 An Old Testament prophet had called the people of Israel to be God’s witnesses in the world (Isa. 43:10; 44:8); the task which Israel had not fulfilled was taken on by Jesus, the perfect Servant of the Lord, and shared by him with his disciples. The close relation between God’s call to Israel, “you are my witnesses,” and the risen Lord’s commission to his apostles, “you will be my witnesses,” can be appreciated the more if we consider the implications of Paul’s quotation of Isa. 49:6 in Acts 13:47.32 There the heralds of the gospel are spoken of as a light for the Gentiles, bearing God’s salvation “to the end of the earth”; here “the end of the earth” and nothing short of that is to be the limit of the apostolic witness.

In Acts we do not find an apostolic succession in the ecclesiastical sense, nor a succession of orthodox tradition, but “a succession of witness to Christ, an apostolic testimony in Jerusalem to the self-styled leaders of Israel until they finally reject it, and an apostolic testimony from Jerusalem to Rome and the Gentile world of Luke’s own day.”33

It has often been pointed out that the geographical terms of verse 8 provide a sort of “Index of Contents” for Acts. “You will be my witnesses” might be regarded as announcing the theme of the book; “in Jerusalem” covers the first seven chapters, “in all Judaea and Samaria” covers 8:1 to 11:18, and the remainder of the book traces the progress of the gospel outside the frontiers of the Holy Land until at last it reaches Rome.34

3. The Ascension (1:9–11)

9Having said this he was taken up, while they looked on, and a cloud received him out of their sight.

10As he went, they remained gazing into heaven, when suddenly two men in white clothing stood beside them.

11“Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”

9 When the Lord had made their commission sufficiently plain to them, he disappeared from their sight, and no further resurrection appearances were granted to them, of the kind which they had experienced on several occasions during the past forty days.

It is Luke’s mention of this period of forty days that is responsible for the arrangement in the Christian calendar by which Ascension Day falls on the fortieth day after Easter. In the apostolic witness Jesus’ resurrection and ascension seem to form one continuous movement, and both together constitute his exaltation. But his exaltation was not postponed to the fortieth day after his triumph over death. The ascension here recorded was not the first occasion when he vanished from his companions’ sight after his resurrection. He did so after he made himself known in the breaking of the bread to the two with whom he walked to Emmaus (Luke 24:31). Nor are we intended to suppose that the intervals between his resurrection appearances during the forty days were passed by him in some intermediate, earth-bound state. The resurrection appearances, in which he accommodated himself to the disciples’ temporal condition of life, even going so far as to eat with them, were visitations from that eternal order to which his “body of glory” now belonged. What happened on the fortieth day was that this series of visitations came to an end with a scene which impressed on the disciples their Master’s heavenly glory.

This was not the first occasion on which some of them at least had had his heavenly glory brought home to them in a similar way. The words “a cloud received him out of their sight” are reminiscent of those with which the Gospel incident of the transfiguration comes to an end: “a cloud came and overshadowed them; … and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone” (Luke 9:34–36).35 They are reminiscent, too, of Jesus’ own language about the parousia of the Son of Man—“coming in clouds with great power and glory” (Mark 13:26); “coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62).36 The transfiguration, the ascension (as here described), and the parousia are three successive manifestations of Jesus’ divine glory.37 The cloud in each case is to be understood as the cloud which envelops the glory of God (the shekhinah)—that cloud which, resting above the Mosaic tabernacle and filling Solomon’s temple, was the visible token to Israel that the divine glory had taken up residence there (Ex. 40:34; 1 Kings 8:10–11). So, in the last moment that the apostles saw their Lord with outward vision, they were granted “a theophany: Jesus is enveloped in the cloud of the divine presence.”38

10 There is no need to be alarmed by suggestions that the ascension story is bound up with a pre-Copernican conception of the universe, and that the former is therefore as obsolete as the latter. Anyone leaving the earth’s surface appears to spectators to be ascending, and so, when the cloud enveloped their Lord, his disciples stood “gazing into heaven” as he disappeared. Some of them, perhaps, remembering a previous experience, expected that the cloud would dissolve and Jesus be left with them, as on the Mount of Transfiguration. Instead, they suddenly became aware of two white-robed men standing by. Luke intends his readers to understand these men to be angelic messengers, like the two men who appeared to the women at the empty tomb of Jesus “in dazzling apparel” (Luke 24:4).39 In both instances the fact that there were two suggests that they are viewed as witnesses, two being the minimum number for credible witness-bearing (Deut. 19:15). On the former occasion the two men bore witness to Jesus’ resurrection; here they bear witness to his forthcoming parousia.

11 They need not stand gazing skyward, said the heavenly visitants. “This Jesus” would return in the same manner as he went. From Luke’s perspective, this promise would indeed be fulfilled, but not immediately. The disciples had seen Jesus go in power and glory; in power and glory he would come back. But an interval would elapse between his exaltation and his parousia, and in that interval the presence of the Spirit would keep his people in living union with their risen, glorified, and returning Lord.40

Christ is ascended, but his abiding presence and energy fill the whole book of Acts, and the whole succeeding story of his people on earth. His exaltation “at God’s right hand”41 means that he is the more effectually present with his people on earth “always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:20). As it is put in Eph. 4:10, he “ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.”

4. In the Upper Room (1:12–14)

12Then they returned to Jerusalem from Mount Olivet,42 which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey distant.

13When they entered (the city), they went up to the upper room where they were staying. There were Peter, John, James, and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James.

14All of these together were giving themselves continually to prayer, along with some women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

12 The apostles’ immediate duty was plain: it was to wait in Jerusalem until the heavenly power came on them. So they returned to the city. The place where their Master was taken from their sight, Luke tells us, was the Mount of Olives, to the east of Jerusalem, “a sabbath day’s journey distant.” This was a distance of 2,000 cubits or around one kilometer, ingeniously reckoned by interpreting Ex. 16:29 (“let no one go out of his place on the seventh day”) in the light of Num. 35:5 (where the Levites’ pasturelands are defined by a radius of 2,000 cubits from any one of the six “cities of refuge”).43 According to Luke 24:50, Jesus “led them out as far as Bethany”; but it is not certain that the same occasion is referred to there as here. Bethany lies on the eastern slopes of Olivet, about fifteen stadia (two and a half kilometers) from Jerusalem (cf. John 11:18).

13 Back in Jerusalem, the apostles went to the place where their company was lodging in the city—the “upper room.” It is possible (although naturally it cannot be proved) that this was the room where Jesus had kept the passover meal with them on the eve of his execution; it may also have been the room where he appeared to some of them on Easter Day (cf. Luke 24:33, 36; John 20:19, 26).44 It is an attractive speculation that the house which contained this upper room was the house of Mary, mother of John Mark (cf. 12:12),45 but this is even less demonstrable.

Luke now gives a list of the apostles,46 identical with that given earlier in Luke 6:14–16, save for a few variations in the order of names and, of course, the deletion of Judas Iscariot. The lists of the Twelve in Mark 3:16–19 and Matt. 10:2–4 differ from Luke’s list mainly by putting Thaddaeus where he has “Judas the son of James.” Otherwise, while the lists vary considerably in order, the same apostles are named together in each of the three groups into which the Twelve are divided by all three writers; and Peter, Philip, and James the son of Alphaeus always come first, fifth, and ninth respectively. There is no sufficient reason for supposing that James the son of Alphaeus was a blood relative of Jesus, or that the name Alphaeus should be identified with Clopas (John 19:25).47

Simon the Zealot, as he is called here and in Luke 6:15, is called “Simon the Cananaean” in Mark 3:18 (followed by Matt. 10:4). “Cananaean” represents the Hebrew or Aramaic word corresponding to “Zealot” (from Gk. zēlōtēs). The word might denote Simon’s zealous temperament, but Mark’s retention of the untranslated Semitic word suggests that it is used as a technical term, denoting a member of the party of the Zealots.48 The Zealots constituted the militant wing of the Jewish independence movement in the first century A.D.; it was they who took the lead in the revolt against Rome in A.D. 66. Although the name “Zealots” (or its Semitic counterpart) is not explicitly attested for them before A.D. 66,49 Josephus dates their rise from the earlier revolt of A.D. 6, when Judas the Galilaean refused to acknowledge the Roman Emperor’s right to receive tribute from Judaea,50 and describes their political doctrine as a “fourth philosophy” among the Jews (in addition to the “philosophies” of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes).51

Judas the son of James may reasonably be identified with “Judas not Iscariot” of John 14:22.52

Of the apostles here listed, only Peter, James, and John are mentioned again in Acts (or in any other New Testament document apart from the Gospels).

14 These eleven apostles had in their company the women who had gone up to Jerusalem from Galilee with Jesus and his followers (cf. Luke 8:2–3; 23:55), and in particular Mary the mother of Jesus. It is worth noting that the latest occasion on which Mary figures in New Testament history—or in any other narrative which can be regarded as in any sense historical—finds her joining in worship with Jesus’ disciples after his ascension.

With these women Jesus’ brothers are also mentioned. It has been warmly debated whether these were his uterine brothers or more remote relatives.53 The burden of proof lies on those who would understand the term in another than its usual sense. Jesus’ brothers did not believe in him during his ministry (cf. John 7:5), but after his resurrection they figure prominently among his followers. Their change in attitude may have resulted from his resurrection appearance to James (1 Cor. 15:7), who in due course occupied a position of undisputed leadership in the Jerusalem church (cf. 12:17; 15:13–21; 21:18). Three other brothers of Jesus are mentioned by name—Joses, Judas, and Simon (Mark 6:3).54 Since the brothers of Jesus receive separate mention here from the apostles, it is evident that the James and Judas who are included in the third quaternion of the apostolic list are not identical with the James and Judas named as two of the brothers of Jesus.55 “The brothers of the Lord” continued to form a distinct group in the church well into the apostolic age (1 Cor. 9:5).56 Here, at the inception of the church’s life, they are recorded as faithfully observing the seasons of united prayer with the other members of this considerable company of believers in Jesus.57

5. A Replacement for Judas Iscariot (1:15–26)

15During these days Peter stood up among the brothers (who numbered about 120 all told).

16“Brothers,” he said, “there must be58 a fulfilment of the scripture which the Holy Spirit spoke in advance through the mouth of David, concerning Judas, who acted as guide to those who arrested Jesus.

17He was numbered among us, and received his share in this ministry.”

18[This man acquired a field with his unrighteous gain, and falling headlong there59 he was ruptured, and all his entrails were spilt out.

19This became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; in consequence, that field came to be called in their speech Hakel-dama, that is, “the field of blood.”]

20“It is written in the book of Psalms,” Peter went on:

‘Let his residence become desolate;

let it be without inhabitant,’

and

‘Let someone else take over his responsibility.’

21Now then, of the men who accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went out and in at our head,60

22right on from John’s baptism until the day he was taken up from us, one must become a witness to his resurrection along with us.”

23So they put forward61 two: Joseph called Barsabbas,62 whose surname was Justus, and Matthias.

24Then they prayed, “O Lord, thou who knowest the hearts of all, show which one of these two thou hast chosen

25to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas defected, to go to his own place.”

26Then they cast lots between them, and the lot fell on Matthias, so he was reckoned along with the eleven63 apostles.

15 The number of those followers of Jesus who were together in Jerusalem was 120 or thereabout.64 In addition, there were more followers of his elsewhere, especially in Galilee. According to 1 Cor. 15:6, there was one occasion when he appeared in resurrection to more than five hundred of his followers; this is probably to be regarded as a Galilaean appearance. The presence and influence of so many followers of Jesus in Galilee should not be forgotten, even if Luke is concerned to trace the expansion of the gospel along the road which begins at Jerusalem and leads to Rome.65

The whole company of 12066 is here referred to as the “brother”—a wider use of that word than in verse 14 (where it denotes Jesus’ relatives). Among them Peter takes the leading place, as to a large extent he did during the period covered by the Gospel narrative. His denial of Jesus in the courtyard of the high priest might well have discredited him irretrievably in his colleagues’ eyes, but the risen Lord’s personal appearance to him and recommissioning of him rehabilitated him and ensured for him a position of leadership never to be forfeited.67

16–17 On this occasion Peter takes the lead in filling the vacancy among the apostles caused by the treachery and death of Judas Iscariot. With one exception, where the term “apostles” bears a somewhat different sense,68 Luke restricts the use of this term to the Twelve. The total of twelve was significant: it corresponded to the number of the tribes of Israel, and may have marked the apostles out as leaders of the new Israel.69

Both the defection of Judas and the necessity of replacing him are viewed here as subjects of Old Testament prophecy. The use of messianic “testimonies” from the Old Testament—texts which had found their fulfilment in the story of Jesus and its sequel and therefore had great evidential value in witnessing to Jews—was a prominent feature of primitive Christian testimony and apologetic.70 It has been held that collections of such “testimonies” were compiled and circulated at an early date for ready reference, their nucleus being provided by Jesus’ own instruction to his disciples on the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy (cf. Luke 24:25–27, 32, 44–47). Even before the time of Jesus some of the material in the Psalter (especially in the “royal psalms”) was interpreted in a messianic sense.71 For those who believed that Jesus was the Messiah of David’s line, this meant that many of the experiences of the psalmist (David) were understood as prophetically applicable to Jesus (cf. 2:25–31, 34–36). Moreover, in the light of Jesus’ passion, many of the afflictions endured by a righteous sufferer in the Psalms were also interpreted of him. It followed that what was said of the enemies of the Lord’s anointed or of the righteous sufferer would be interpreted of the enemies of Jesus (cf. 4:25–28). Among his enemies Judas was unenviably prominent, and it was not difficult to find Old Testament texts which pointed to him. In John 13:18 Jesus, announcing the presence of a traitor in the company in the upper room, quotes Ps. 41:9 (“he who ate my bread has turned against me”), and in praying for his disciples in John 17:12 he says, “none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled.” Matthew brings together a text from Zechariah with one from Jeremiah to provide a composite “testimony” of the price which Judas received for his betrayal and the field which was bought with it (Matt. 27:9–10).72 So Peter here adduces further “testimonies” from the Psalter. Their real author, he affirms, is the Holy Spirit, who spoke through the prophet; David, being a prophet, was but a spokesman or mouthpiece of the Spirit (cf. 2:30; 4:25).

18–19 Before Luke reproduces the actual texts from the Psalter which Peter cited to establish his point, he inserts a parenthesis in order that his readers may understand the background of Peter’s remarks. Peter did not need to tell his hearers in the upper room what had happened to Judas, nor can the words of verse 19, “that field came to be called in their speech Hakel-dama,” be part of Peter’s direct speech. But when Luke visited Jerusalem in A.D. 57, he was probably told the story of Judas’s death, and he inserts it here. Judas, he was told, bought a field with his ill-gotten gain. But he did not live to enjoy the fruits of his shameful act, for he fell and sustained a fatal rupture.73 The field was accordingly called by an Aramaic name meaning “the field of blood.”74

20 After this parenthesis, Luke continues with his report of Peter’s speech, and quotes the two texts from the Psalter to which Peter appealed. The former, from Ps. 69:25, is a prayer that the dwelling place of the psalmist’s enemies may be deserted; the latter, from Ps. 109:8, prays that a certain enemy may die before his time and be replaced in his responsible position by someone else. Here, then, is warrant for the appointment of a successor to Judas.

21–22 The essential qualifications of an acceptable successor to Judas are then set forth: he must have been an associate of the Lord and his apostles from the time of John the Baptist’s activity to the day of the Lord’s ascension; he must in particular be a witness to the resurrection, as the other apostles were. It is noteworthy in the first place that the period indicated is the period covered in the primitive apostolic preaching, the kerygma (cf. 10:37; 13:24–25). In the second place, the statement that the apostles had been in Jesus’ company since the days when John was baptizing agrees with the evidence of the Fourth Gospel, according to which nearly half of the Twelve began to follow Jesus in the days immediately following his baptism by John (John 1:35–51). The call of the apostles recorded in the Synoptic Gospels took place after John’s imprisonment (Mark 1:14–20).

23 The disciples’ choice fell on two of their number who possessed the necessary qualifications. Joseph’s additional name Barsabbas (“son of the sabbath”) may have been given to him because he was born on the sabbath day.75 Like many other Jews at that time, he bore a Gentile name as well as his Jewish one: the Latin cognomen Justus bore a superficial similarity to Joseph and may further have been regarded as a rendering of the Hebrew epithet Ṣaddîq (“righteous”).76 According to Eusebius and the later writer Philip of Side, Papias reported on the authority of Philip’s daughters (cf. 21:9) that this Joseph, when challenged by unbelievers, drank snake venom in the Lord’s name and suffered no harm.77 As for Matthias, he is said by Eusebius to have been one of the seventy disciples of Luke 10:1.78 Perhaps he was, but Eusebius (or his source) may only be guessing. Later tradition represents Matthias as a missionary to the Ethiopians.

24–26 The disciples did not cast lots haphazardly: they first selected the two men whom they judged worthiest to fill the vacancy. It may well be that there was nothing to choose between Joseph and Matthias; in that case the casting of lots, which had very respectable precedent in Hebrew sacred history, was a reasonable way of deciding on one of the two, especially since they besought God to overrule the lot, in the spirit of Prov. 16:33:

“The lot is cast into the lap,

but the decision is wholly from the LORD.”79

There is, to be sure, no New Testament example of this procedure after the descent of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost; this may or may not be significant.

The prayer is couched in dignified language, with liturgical echoes.80 The question whether the “Lord” to whom it is addressed is God the Father or the Lord Jesus is probably settled by the fact that the same verb is used in verse 24 (“thou hast chosen”) as in verse 2 (“the apostles whom he [Jesus] had chosen”).81 The same Lord who had chosen the apostles at the beginning of his ministry would choose this replacement for Judas.

The reference to Judas’s going “to his own place” is no doubt euphemistic, but the reticence with which they alluded to his fate might be marked and emulated. The circumstances of his death gave them little ground for optimism in this regard, but they would not take it on themselves to say what “his own place” was.82

The lots, then, were cast; Matthias was indicated as the man to be co-opted in Judas’s place. The number of the apostles was restored to twelve. It was Judas’s defection and not the mere fact of his death that created the vacancy; no steps were taken to appoint a successor to James the son of Zebedee when he died by the executioner’s sword some years later.83 Unlike Judas, James was faithful unto death, and might hope to reign with Christ in resurrection, if not (as he had once expected) in this present life.84

It has sometimes been suggested that the apostles were wrong in co-opting Matthias to complete their number, that they should have waited until, in God’s good time, Paul was ready to fill the vacancy.85 This is a complete mistake, and betrays a failure to appreciate the special character of Paul’s apostleship. Paul did not possess the qualifications set out in verses 21 and 22. He himself would certainly have dismissed as preposterous the idea that he was rightfully the twelfth apostle, on the same footing as Peter and the rest of the eleven.