International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Abubus — Adinus
Abubus
Abubus - a-bu'-bus (Aboubos): The father of Ptolemy, who deceitfully slew Simon Maccabee and his sons at Dok near Jericho (1 Maccabees 16:11, 15).
Abundance; Abundant
Abundance; Abundant - a-bun'-dans, a-bun'-dant.
See ABOUND.
Abuse
Abuse - a-buz': "To dishonor," "to make mock of," "to insult," etc. (1) Translated in the Old Testament from `alal, "to do harm," "to defile" (Judges 19:25), "to make mock of" (1 Samuel 31:4). (2) Translated in the New Testament from arsenokoites, literally, "one who lies with a male," "a sodomite" (1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10; the King James Version "for them that defile themselves with mankind"). (3) In the King James Version 1 Corinthians 7:31 "as not abusing it," from katachraomai, "to abuse," i.e. misuse; the Revised Version (British and American) "using it to the full," also 1 Corinthians 9:18.
Abyss
Abyss - a-bis', (he abussos): In classical Greek the word is always an adjective, and is used (1) literally, "very deep," "bottomless"; (2) figuratively, "unfathomable," "boundless." "Abyss" does not occur in the King James Version but the Revised Version (British and American) so transliterates abussos in each case. The the King James Version renders the Greek by "the deep" in two passages (Luke 8:31; Romans 10:7). In Revelation the King James Version renders by "the bottomless pit" (Revelation 9:1-2, 11; 11:7; 17:8; 1, 3). In the Septuagint abussos is the rendering of the Hebrew word tehom. According to primitive Semitic cosmogony the earth was supposed to rest on a vast body of water which was the source of all springs of water and rivers (Genesis 1:2; Deuteronomy 8:7; Psalms 24:2; 136:6). This subterranean ocean is sometimes described as "the water under the earth" (Exodus 20:4; Deuteronomy 5:8). According to Job 41:32 tehom is the home of the leviathan in which he plows his hoary path of foam. The Septuagint never uses abussos as a rendering of sheol (= Sheol = Hades) and probably tehom never meant the "abode of the dead" which was the ordinary meaning of Sheol. In Psalms 71:20 tehom is used figuratively, and denotes "many and sore troubles" through which the psalmist has passed (compare Jonah 2:5). But in the New Testament the word abussos means the "abode of demons." In Luke 8:31 the King James Version renders "into the deep" (Weymouth and The Twentieth Century New Testament = "into the bottomless pit"). The demons do not wish to be sent to their place of punishment before their destined time. Mark simply says "out of the country" (Luke 5:10). In Romans 10:7 the word is equivalent to Hades, the abode of the dead. In Revelation (where the King James Version renders invariably "the bottomless pit") abussos denotes the abode of evil spirits, but not the place of final punishment; it is therefore to be distinguished from the "lake of fire and brimstone" where the beast and the false prophet are, and into which the Devil is to be finally cast (Revelation 19:20; 20:10).
See also ASTRONOMY, sec. III, 7.
Thomas Lewis
Abyssinia
Abyssinia - ab-i-sin'-i-a.
See ETHIOPIA.
Acacia
Acacia - a-ka'-sha (shiTTah, the shittah tree of the King James Version, Isaiah 41:19, and `atse-shiTTah, acacia wood; shittah wood the King James Version, Exodus 25:5, 10, 13; 15, 26; 1, 6; Deuteronomy 10:3.): ShiTTah (= shinTah) is equivalent to the Arabic sant which is now the name of the Acacia Nilotica (NO, Leguminosae), but no doubt the name once included other species of desert acacias. If one particular species is indicated in the Old Testament it is probably the Acacia Seyal--the Arabic Seyyal--which yields the well-known gum-arabic This tree, which has finely leaves ular flowers, grows to a height of twenty feet or more, and its stem may sometimes reach two feet in thickness. The tree often assumes a characteristic umbrella-like form. The wood is close-grained and is not readily attacked by insects. It would be well suited for such purposes as described, the construction of the ark of the covenant, the altar and boarding of the tabernacle. Even today these trees survive in considerable numbers around `Ain Jidy and in the valleys to the south.
E. W. G. Masterman
Acatan
Acatan - ak'-a-tan.
See AKATAN (Apocrypha).
Accaba
Accaba - ak'-a-ba, ak-a'-ba (B, Akkaba; A, Gaba; the King James Version Agaba) = Hagab (Ezra 2:46); see also HAGABA (Nehemiah 7:48): The descendants of Accaba (temple-servants) returned with Zerubbabel to Jerusalem (1 Esdras 5:30).
Accad; Accadians
Accad; Accadians - ak'-ad, ak-a'-di-ans.
See BABYLONIA.
Accaron
Accaron - ak'-a-ron (Akkaron): Mentioned in 1 Maccabees 10:89 the King James Version; a town of the Philistines, known as Ekron (`eqron) in Old Testament, which King Alexander gave to Jonathan Maccabeus as a reward for successful military service in western Palestine. It is also mentioned in the days of the Crusades.
See EKRON.
Accept; Acceptable; Acceptation
Accept; Acceptable; Acceptation - ak-sept', ak-sep'-ta-b'-l, ak-sep-ta'-shun: "To receive with favor," "to take pleasure in"; "well-pleasing"; "the act of receiving."
Accept, used (1) of sacrifice, "accept thy burnt-sacrifice" (dashen, "accept as fat," i.e. receive favorably; Psalms 20:3); (2) of persons, "Yahweh accept Job" (Job 42:9, nasa', "to lift up," "take," "receive"); (3) of works, "a the work of his hands" (Deuteronomy 33:11 ratsah, "to delight in"). In New Testament (1) of favors, "We accept .... with all thankfulness" (apodechomai, Acts 24:3); (2) of personal appeal, "He accept our exhortation" (2 Corinthians 8:17); (3) of God's Impartiality (lambano, "to take," "receive"); "accepteth not man's person" (Galatians 2:6).
Acceptable, used (1) of justice (bachar, "choose select"), "more accept .... than sacrifice" (Proverbs 21:3); (2) of words (chephets, "delight in," "sought .... accept words" (Ecclesiastes 12:10); (3) of times (ratson, "delight," "approbation"; dektos, "receivable") "acceptable year of the Lord" (Isaiah 61:2 (King James Version); Luke 4:19); (4) of spiritual sacrifice (euprosdektos, "well received"), "acceptable to God" (1 Peter 2:5); (5) of patient endurance (charis, "grace," "favor") "This is acceptable with God" (1 Peter 2:20).
Acceptation, used twice to indicate the trustworthiness of the gospel of Christ's saving grace: "worthy of all acceptation." (1 Timothy 1:15; 4:9).
These words are full of the abundant grace of God and are rich in comfort to believers. That which makes man, in word, work and character, acceptable to God; and renders It possible for God to accept him, his service and sacrifice, is the fullness of the Divine mercy and grace and forgiveness. He "chose us" and made us, as adopted sons, the heirs of His grace "which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:6; compare the King James Version).
Dwight M. Pratt
Acceptance
Acceptance - ak-sep'-tans: A rendering of the Hebrew retson, "delight," found only in Isaiah 60:7. It pictures God's delight in His redeemed people in the Messianic era, when their gifts, in joyful and profuse abundance, "shall come up with acceptance on mine altar." With "accepted" and other kindred words it implies redeeming grace as the basis of Divine favor. It is the "living, holy sacrifice" that is "acceptable to God" (Romans 12:1; compare Titus 3:4-6).
Access
Access - ak'-ses (prosagoge, "a leading to or toward," "approach"): Thrice used in the New Testament to indicate the acceptable way of approach to God and of admission to His favor. Jesus said, "I am the way" (John 14:6). His blood is the "new and living way" (Hebrews 10:20). Only through Him have we "access by faith into this grace wherein we stand" (Romans 5:2); "Through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father" (Ephesians 2:18 the King James Version); "in whom we have .... access in confidence, through our faith in him" (Ephesians 3:12).
The goal of redemption is life in God, "unto the Father." The means of redemption is the cross of Christ, "in whom we have our redemption through his blood" (Ephesians 1:7). The agent in redemption is the Holy Spirit, "by one Spirit," "sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise" (Ephesians 1:13). The human instrumentality, faith. The whole process of approach to, and abiding fellowship with, God is summed up in this brief sentence Access to the Father, through Christ, by the Spirit, by faith.
Dwight M. Pratt
Acco
Acco - ak'-o (`akko; [`Akcho]; Ake Ptolemais; Modern Arabic `Akka, English Acre; the King James Version Accho): A town on the Syrian coast a few miles north of Carmel, on a small promontory on the north side of a broad bay that lies between it and the modern town of Haifa. This bay furnishes the best anchorage for ships of any on this coast except that of George, at Beirut, and Alexandretta at the extreme north. As the situation commanded the approach from the sea to the rich plateau of Esdraelon and also the coast route from the north, the city was regarded in ancient times of great importance and at various periods of history was the scene of severe struggles for its possession. It fell within the bounds assigned to the Israelites, particularly to the tribe of Asher, but they were never able to take it (Joshua 19:24-31; Judges 1:31). It was, like Tyre and Sidon, too strong for them to attack and it became indeed a fortress of unusual strength, so that it many a siege, often baffling its assailants. In the period of the Crusades it was the most famous stronghold on the coast, and in very early times it was a place of importance and appears in the Tell el-Amarna Letters as a possession of the Egyptian kings. Its governor wrote to his suzerain professing loyalty when the northern towns were falling away (Am Tab 17 BM, 95 B). The Egyptian suzerainty over the coast, which was established by Thothmes III about 1480 BC, was apparently lost in the 14th century, as is indicated in Tell el-Amarna Letters, but was regained under Seti I and his more famous son Rameses II in the 13th, to be again lost in the 12th when the Phoenician towns seem to have established their independence. Sidon however surpassed her sisters in power and exercised a sort of hegemony over the Phoenician towns, at least in the south, and Acco was included in it (Rawl. Phoenica, 407-8). But when Assyria came upon the scene it had to submit to this power, although it revolted whenever Assyria became weak, as appears from the mention of its subjugation by Sennacherib (ib 449), and by Ashurbanipal (ib 458). The latter "quieted" it by a wholesale massacre and then carried into captivity the remaining inhabitants. Upon the downfall of Assyria it passed, together with other Phoenician towns, under the dominion of Babylon and then of Persia, but we have no records of its annals during that period; but it followed the fortunes of the more important cities, Tyre and Sidon. In the Seleucid period (BC 312-65) the town became of importance in the contests between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies. The latter occupied it during the struggles that succeeded the death of Alexander and made it their stronghold on the coast and changed the name to PTOLEMAIS, by which it was known in the Greek and Roman period as we see in the accounts of the Greek and Roman writers and in Josephus, as well as in New Testament (1 Maccabees 5:22; 10:39; 12:48; Acts 21:7). The old name still continued locally and reasserted itself in later times. The Ptolemies held undisputed possession of the place for about 70 years but it was wrested from them by Antiochus III, of Syria, in 219 BC and went into the permanent possession of the Seleucids after the decisive victory of Antiochus over Scopas in that year, the result of which was the expulsion of the Ptolemies from Syria, Palestine and Phoenicia (Ant., XII, iii, 3). In the dynastic struggles of the Seleucids it fell into the hands of Alexander Bala, who there received the hand of Cleopatra, the daughter of Ptolemy Philometor, as a pledge of alliance between them (ib XIII, iv, 1). Tigranes, king of Armenia, besieged it on his invasion of Syria, but was obliged to relinquish it on the approach of the Romans toward his own dominions (BJ, I, v, 3). Under the Romans Ptolemais became a colony and a metropolis, as is known from coins, and was of importance, as is attested by Strabo. But the events that followed the conquests of the Saracens, leading to the Crusades, brought it into great prominence. It was captured by the Crusaders in 1110 AD, and remained in their hands until 1187, when it was taken from them by Saladin and its fortifications so strengthened as to render it almost impregnable. The importance of this fortress as a key to the Holy Land was considered so great by the Crusaders that they put forth every effort during two years to recapture it, but all in vain until the arrival of Richard Coeur de Lion and Philip Augustus with reinforcements, and it was only after the most strenuous efforts on their part that the place fell into their hands, but it cost them 100,000 men. The fortifications were repaired and it was afterward committed to the charge of the knights of John, by whom it was held for 100 years and received the name of Jean d'Acre. It was finally taken by the Saracens in 1291, being the last place held by the Crusaders in Palestine
It declined after this and fell into the hands of the Ottomans under Selim I in 1516, and remained mostly in ruins until the 18th century, when it came into the possession of Jezzar Pasha, who usurped the authority over it and the neighboring district and became practically independent of the Sultan and defied his authority. In 1799 it was attacked by Napoleon but was bravely and successfully defended by the Turks with the help of the English fleet, and Napoleon had to abandon the siege after he had spent two months before it and gained a victory over the Turkish army at Tabor. It enjoyed a considerable degree of prosperity after this until 1831 when it was besieged by Ibrahim Pasha, of Egypt, and taken, but only after a siege of more than five months in which it suffered the destruction of its walls and many of its buildings. It continued in the hands of the Egyptians until 1840 when it was restored to the Ottomans by the English whose fleet nearly reduced it to ruins in the bombardment. It has recovered somewhat since then and is now a town of some 10,000 inhabitants and the seat of a Mutasarrifiyet, or subdivision of the Vilayet of Beirut. It contains one of the state prisons of the Vilayet, where long-term prisoners are incarcerated. Its former commerce has been almost wholly lost to the town of Haifa, on the south side of the bay, since the latter has a fairly good roadstead, while Acre has none, and the former being the terminus of the railway which connects with the interior and the Damascus-Mecca line, it has naturally supplanted Acre as a center of trade.
H. Porter
Accommodation
Accommodation - a-kom-mo-da'-shun:
I. INTRODUCTORY
1. Three Uses of the Term
2. The Importance of the Subject
II. ACCOMMODATED APPLICATION OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES
1. Interpretation a Science
2. Scientific Accommodation
III. DOUBLE REFERENCE IN SCRIPTURE
1. Allegory in Scripture
2. Hidden Truths of Scripture
3. Prophecy and its Fulfillment
4. Conclusion
IV. ACCOMMODATION IN REVELATION
1. General Principles
2. Accommodation a Feature of Progressive Revelation
3. The Limits of Revelation
4. The Outcome of Revelation
5. The Question as to Christ's Method
LITERATURE
I. Introductory. 1. Three Uses of the Term: The term "accommodation" is used in three senses which demand careful discrimination and are worthy of separate treatment: (1) the use or application of a Scripture reference in a sense other than the obvious and literal one which lay in the mind and intent of the writer; (2) theory that a passage, according to its original intent, may have more than one meaning or application; (3) the general principle of adaptation on the part of God in His self-revelation to man's mental and spiritual capacity.
2. The Importance of the Subject: Important issues are involved in the discussion of this subject in each of the three divisions thus naturally presented to us in the various uses of the term. These issues culminate in the supremely important principles which underlie the question of God's adaptation of His revelation to men.
II. Accommodated Application of Scripture Passages.
1. Interpretation a Science: It is obvious that the nature of thought and of language is such as to constitute for all human writings, among which the Bible, as a document to be understood, must be placed, a science of interpretation with a definite body of laws which cannot be violated or set aside without confusion and error. This excludes the indeterminate and arbitrary exegesis of any passage It must be interpreted with precision and in accordance with recognized laws of interpretation. The first and most fundamental of these laws is that a passage is to be interpreted in accordance with the intent of the writer in so far as that can be ascertained. The obvious, literal and original meaning always has the right of way. All arbitrary twisting of a passage in order to obtain from it new and remote meanings not justified by the context is unscientific and misleading.
2. Scientific Accommodation: There is, however, a scientific and legitimate use of the principle of accommodation. For example, it is impossible to determine beforehand that a writer's specific application of a general principle is the only one of which it is capable. A bald and literal statement of fact may involve a general principle which is capable of broad and effective application in other spheres than that originally contemplated. It is perfectly legitimate to detach a writer's statement from its context of secondary and incidental detail and give it a harmonious setting of wider application. It will be seen from this that legitimate accommodation involves two things: (1) the acceptance of the author's primary and literal meaning; (2) the extension of that meaning through the establishment of a broader context identical in principle with the original one. In the article on QUOTATIONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT (which see) this use of the term accommodation, here treated in the most general terms, is dealt with in detail.
See also INTERPRETATION.
III. Double Reference in Scripture. The second use of the term accommodation now emerges for discussion. Are we to infer the presence of double reference, or secondary meanings in Scripture? Here again we must distinguish between the legitimate and illegitimate application of a principle. While we wisely deprecate the tendency to look upon Scripture passages as cryptic utterances, we must also recognize that many Scripture references may have more than a single application.
1. Allegory in Scripture: We must recognize in the Scriptures the use of allegory, the peculiar quality of which, as a form of literature, is the double reference which it contains. To interpret the story of the Bramble-King (Judges 9:7-15) or the Parables of our Lord without reference to the double meanings which they involve would be as false and arbitrary as any extreme of allegorizing. The double meaning is of the essence of the literary expression. This does not mean, of course, that the poetry of the Bible, even that of the Prophets and Apocalyptic writers, is to be looked upon as allegorical. On the contrary, only that writing, whether prose or poetry, is to be interpreted in any other than its natural and obvious sense, in connection with which we have definite indications of its allegorical character. Figures of speech and poetical expressions in general, though not intended to be taken literally because they belong to the poetical form, are not to be taken as having occult references and allegorical meanings. Dr. A. B. Davidson thus characterizes the prophetic style (Old Testament Prophecy, 171; see whole chapter): "Prophecy is poetical, but it is not allegorical. The language of prophecy is real as opposed to allegorical, and poetical as opposed to real. When the prophets speak of natural objects or of lower creatures, they do not mean human things by them, or human beings, but these natural objects or creatures themselves. When Joel speaks of locusts, he means those creatures. When he speaks of the sun and moon and stars, he means those bodies." Allegory, therefore, which contains the double reference, in the sense of speaking of one thing while meaning another, is a definite and recognizable literary form with its own proper laws of interpretation.
See ALLEGORY.
2. Hidden Truths of Scripture: There is progress in the understanding of Scripture. New reaches of truth are continually being brought to light. By legitimate and natural methods hidden meanings are being continually discovered.
(1) It is a well-attested fact that apart from any supernatural factor a writer sometimes speaks more wisely than he knows. He is the partially unconscious agent for the expression of a great truth, not only for his own age, but for all time. It is not often given to such a really great writer or to his age to recognize all the implications of his thought. Depths of meaning hidden both from the original writer and from earlier interpreters may be disclosed by moving historical sidelights. The element of permanent value in great literature is due to the fact that the writer utters a greater truth than can exhaustively be known in any one era. It belongs to all time.
(2) The supernatural factor which has gone to the making of Scripture insures that no one man or group of men, that not all men together, can know it exhaustively. It partakes of the inexhaustibleness of God. It is certain, therefore, that it will keep pace with the general progress of man, exhibiting new phases of meaning as it moves along the stream of history. Improved exegetical apparatus and methods, enlarged apprehensions into widening vistas of thought and knowledge, increased insight under the tutelage of the Spirit in the growing Kingdom of God, will conspire to draw up new meanings from the depths of Scripture. The thought of God in any given expression of truth can only be progressively and approximately known by human beings who begin in ignorance and must be taught what they know.
(3) The supernatural factor in revelation also implies a twofold thought in every important or fundamental statement of Scripture: the thought of God uttered through His Spirit to a man or his generation, and that same thought with reference to the coming ages and to the whole truth which is to be disclosed. Every separate item belonging to an organism of truth would naturally have a twofold reference: first, its significance alone and of itself; second, its significance with reference to the whole of which it is a part. As all great Scriptural truths are thus organically related, it follows that no one of them can be fully known apart from all the others. From which it follows also that in a process of gradual revelation where truths are given successively as men are able to receive them and where each successive truth prepares the way for others which are to follow, every earlier statement will have two ranges of meaning and application--that which is intrinsic and that which flows from its connection with the entire organism of unfolding truth which finally appears.
3. Prophecy and Its Fulfillment: (1) The principles thus far expressed carry us a certain way toward an answer to the most important question which arises under this division of the general topic: the relation between the Old Testament and the New Testament through prophecy and its fulfillment. Four specific points of connection involving the principles of prophetic anticipation and historical realization in the career of Jesus are alleged by New Testament writers. They are of total importance, inasmuch as these four groups of interpretations involve the most important elements of the Old Testament and practically the entire New Testament interpretation of Jesus.
(2) (a) The promise made to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3; compare Genesis 13:14-18; Genesis 15:1-6, etc.) and repeated in substance at intervals during the history of Israel (see Exodus 6:7; Leviticus 26:12; Deuteronomy 26:17-19; Deuteronomy 29:12-13; 2 Samuel 7:1-29; 1 Chronicles 17:1-27, etc.) is interpreted as having reference to the distant future and as fulfilled in Christ (see Galatians 3:1-29 for example of this interpretation, especially Galatians 3:14; also QUOTATIONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT).
(b) The Old Testament system of sacrifices is looked upon as typical and symbolic, hence, predictive and realized in the death of Christ interpreted as atonement for sin (Hebrews 10:1-39, etc.).
(c) References in the Old Testament to kings or a king of David's line whose advent and reign are spoken of are interpreted as definite predictions fulfilled in the advent and career of Jesus the Messiah (Psalms 2:1-12; Psalms 16:1-11; Psalms 22:1-31; Psalms 110:1-7; compare Luke 1:69, etc.).
(d) The prophetic conception of the servant of Yahweh (Isaiah 42:1 f; Isaiah 44:1 f; Isaiah 52:13 through Isaiah 53:12; compare Acts 8:32-35) is interpreted as being an anticipatory description of the character and work of Jesus centering in His vicarious sin-bearing death.
(3) With the details of interpretation as involved in the specific use of Old Testament statements we are not concerned here (see QUOTATIONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, etc.) but only with the general principles which underlie all such uses of the Old Testament. The problem is: Can we thus interpret any passage or group of passages in the Old Testament without being guilty of what has been called "pedantic supernaturalism"; that is, of distorting Scripture by interpreting it without regard to its natural historical connections? Is the interpretation of the Old Testament Messianically legitimate or illegitimate accommodation?
(c) It is a widely accepted canon of modern interpretation that the institutions of Old Testament worship and the various messages of the prophets had an intrinsic contemporary significance.
(b) But this is not to say that its meaning and value are exhausted in that immediate contemporary application. Beyond question the prophet was a man with a message to his own age, but there is nothing incompatible, in that fact, with his having a message, the full significance of which reaches beyond ins own age, even into the far distant future. It would serve to clear the air in this whole region if it were only understood that it is precisely upon its grasp of the future that the leverage of a great message for immediate moral uplift rests. The predictive element is a vital part of the contemporary value.
(c) The material given under the preceding analysis may be dealt with as a whole on the basis of a principle fundamental to the entire Old Testament economy, namely: that each successive age in the history of Israel is dealt with on the basis of truth common to the entire movement of which the history of Israel is but a single phase. It is further to be remembered that relationship between the earlier and later parts of the Bible is one of organic and essential unity, both doctrinal and historical. By virtue of this fact the predictive element is an essential factor in the doctrines and institutions of the earlier dispensation as originally constituted and delivered, hence forming a part of its contemporary significance and value, both pointing to the future and preparing the way for it. In like manner, the element of fulfillment is an essential element of the later dispensation as the completed outcome of the movement begun long ages before. Prediction and fulfillment are essential factors in any unified movement begun, advanced and completed according to a single plan in successive periods of time. We have now but to apply this principle in general to the Old Testament material already in hand to reach definite and satisfactory conclusions.
(4) (a) The promise made to Abraham was a living message addressed directly to him in the immediate circumstances of his life upon which the delivery and acceptance of the promise made a permanent impress; but it was of vaster proportions than could be realized within the compass of a single human life; for it included himself, his posterity, and all mankind in a single circle of promised blessing. So far as the patriarch was concerned the immediate, contemporary value of the promise lay in the fact that it concerned him not alone but in relationship to the future and to mankind. A prediction was thus imbedded in the very heart of the word of God which was the object of his faith--a prediction which served to enclose his life in the plan of God for all mankind and to fasten his ambition to the service of that plan. The promise was predictive in its essence and in its contemporary meaning (see Beecher, Prophets and Promise, 213).
(b) So also it is with the Messianic King. The Kingdom as an institution in Israel is described from the beginning as the perpetual mediatorial reign of God upon earth (see Exodus 19:3-6; 2 Samuel 7:8-16, etc.), and the King in whom the Kingdom centers is God's Son (2 Samuel 7:13, 15) and earthly representative. In all this there is much that is immediately contemporaneous. The Kingdom and the Kingship are described in terms of the ideal and that ideal is used in every age as the ground of immediate appeal to loyalty and devotion on the part of the King. None the less the predictive element lies at the center of the representation. The very first recorded expression of the Messianic promise to David involves the prediction of unconditioned perpetuity to his house, and thus grasps the entire future. More than this, the characteristics, the functions, the dignities of the king are so described (Psalms 102:1-28; Isaiah 9:6-7) as to make it clear that the conditions of the Kingship could be met only by an uniquely endowed person coming forth from God and exercising divine functions in a worldwide spiritual empire. Such a King being described and such a Kingdom being promised, the recipients of it, of necessity, were set to judge the present and scrutinize the future for its realization. The conception is, in its original meaning and expression, essentially predictive.
(c) Very closely allied with this conception of the Messianic King is the prophetic ideal of the Servant of Yahweh. Looked at in its original context we at once discover that it is the ideal delineation of a mediatorial service to men in behalf of Yahweh--which has a certain meaning of fulfillment in any person who exhibits the Divine character by teaching the truth and ministering to human need (for application of the term see Isaiah 49:5-6, 7; 50:10; especially Isaiah 45:1). But the service is described in such exalted terms, the devotion exacted by it is so high, that, in the application of the ideal as a test to the present and to the nation at large, the mind is inevitably thrown into the future and centered upon a supremely endowed individual to come, who is by preeminence the Servant of Yahweh.
(d) The same principle may be applied with equal effectiveness to the matter of Israel's sacrificial system. In the last two instances this fact emerged: No truth and no institution can exhaustively be known until it has run a course in history. For example, the ideas embodied in the Messianic Kingship and the conception of the Servant of Yahweh could be known only in the light of history. Only in view of the actual struggles and failures of successive kings and successive generations of the people to realize such ideals could their full significance be disclosed. Moreover, only by historic process of preparation could such ideals ultimately be realized. This is preeminently true of the Old Testament sacrifices. It is clear that the New Testament conception of the significance of Old Testament sacrifice in connection with the death of Christ is based upon the belief that the idea embodied in the original institution could be fulfilled only in the voluntary sacrifice of Christ (see Hebrews 10:1-14). This view is justified by the facts. Dr. Davidson (op. cit., 239) holds that the predictive element in the Old Testament sacrifices lay in their imperfection. This imperfection, while inherent, could be revealed only in experience. As they gradually deepened a sense of need which they could not satisfy, more and more clearly they pointed away from themselves to that transaction which alone could realize in fact what they express in symbol. A harmony such as obtained between Old Testament sacrifice and the death of Christ could only be the result of design. It is all one movement, one fundamental operation; historically prefigured and prepared for by anticipation, and historically realized. Old Testament sacrifice was instituted both to prefigure and to prepare the way for the sacrifice of Christ in the very process of fulfilling its natural historic function in the economy of Israel.
4. Conclusion: The total outcome of the discussion is this: the interpretation of these representative Old Testament ideas and institutions as referring to Christ and anticipating His advent is no illegitimate use of the principle of accommodation. The future reference which takes in the entire historical process which culminates in Christ lies within the immediate and original application and constitutes an essential element of its contemporary value. The original statement is in its very nature predictive and is one in doctrinal principle and historic continuity with that which forms its fulfillment.
IV. Accommodation in Revelation. 1. General Principles: (1) It is evident that God's revelation to men must be conveyed in comprehensible terms and adjusted to the nature of the human understanding. That is clearly not a revelation which does not reveal. A disclosure of God's character and ways to men revolves the use and control of the human spirit in accordance with its constitution and laws. The doctrine of inspiration inseparable from that of revelation implies such a divine control of human faculties as to enable them, still freely working within their own normal sphere, to apprehend and interpret truth otherwise beyond their reach.
(2) The Bible teaches that in the height and depth of His being God is unsearchable. His mind and the human mind are quantitatively incommensurable. Man cannot by searching find out God. His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts.
(3) But, on the other hand, the Bible affirms with equal emphasis the essential qualitative kinship of the divine and the human constitutions God is spirit--man is spirit also. Man is made in the image of God and made to know God. These two principles together affirm the necessity and the possibility of revelation. Revelation, considered as an exceptional order of experience due to acts of God performed with the purpose of making Himself known in personal relationship with man, is necessary because man's finite nature needs guidance. Revelation is possible because man is capable of such guidance. The Bible affirms that God's thoughts are not our thoughts, but that they may become ours because God can utter them so that we can receive them.
(4) These two principles lead to a most important conclusion. In all discussions of the principle of accommodation it is to be remembered that the capacity of the human mind to construct does not measure its capacity to receive and appropriate. The human mind can be taught what it cannot independently discover. No teacher is limited by the capacity of his pupils to deal unaided with a subject of study. He is limited only by their capacity to follow him in his processes of thought and exposition. The determining factor in revelation, which is a true educative process, is the mind of God which stamps itself upon the kindred and plastic mind of man.
2. Accommodation a Feature of Progressive Revelation:
(1) The beginnings of revelation. Since man's experience is organically conditioned he is under the law of growth. His entire mental and spiritual life is related to his part and lot in the kingdom of organisms. The very laws of his mind reveal themselves only upon occasion in experience. While it is true that his tendencies are innate, so that he is compelled to think and to feel in certain definite ways, yet it is true that he can neither think nor feel at all except as experience presents material for thought and applies stimulus to feeling Man must bye in order to learn. He must, therefore, learn gradually. This fact conditions all revelation. Since it must deal with men it must be progressive, and since it must be progressive it must necessarily involve, in its earlier stages, the principle of accommodation. In order to gain access to man's mind it must take him where he is and link itself with his natural aptitudes and native modes of thought. Since revelation involves the endeavor to form in the mind of man the idea of God in order that a right relationship with Him may be established, it enters both the intellectual and moral life of the human race and must accommodate itself to the humble beginnings of early human experience. The chief problem of revelation seems to have been to bring these crude beginnings within the scope of a movement the aim and end of which is perfection. The application of the principle of accommodation to early human experience with a view to progress is accomplished by doing what at first thought seems to negate the very principle upon which the mental and moral life of man must permanently rest. (a) It involves the authoritative revelations of incomplete and merely tentative truths. (b) It involves also the positive enactment of rudimentary and imperfect morality.
In both these particulars Scripture has accommodated itself to crude early notions and placed the seal of authority upon principles which are outgrown and discarded within the limits of Scripture itself. But in so doing Scripture has saved the very interests it has seemed to imperil by virtue of two features of the human constitution which in themselves lay hold upon perfection and serve to bind together the crude beginnings and the mature achievements of the human race. These two principles are (c) the idea of truth; (d) the idea of obligation.
(2) It is mainly due to these two factors of human nature that any progress in truth and conduct is possible to men. What is true or right in matter of specific fact varies in the judgment of different individuals and of different ages. But the august and compelling twin convictions of truth and right, as absolute, eternal, authoritative, are present from the beginning of human history to the end of it. Scripture seizes upon the fact that these great ideas may be enforced through crude human conceptions and at very rudimentary stages of culture, and enforcing them by means of revelation and imperative law brings man to the test of truth and right and fosters his advance to larger conceptions and broader applications of both fundamental principles. Canon Mozley in discussing this principle of accommodation on its moral side, its necessity and its fruitfulness, says: "How can the law properly fulfill its object of correcting and improving the moral standard of men, unless it first maintains in obligation the standard which already exists? Those crudely delineated conceptions, which it tends ultimately to purify and raise, it must first impose" (Ruling Ideas in Early Ages, 183; compare Matthew 5:17 with Matthew 21:1-46, 27, 33).
3. The Limits of Revelation: Since the chief end of revelation is to form the mind of man with reference to the purpose and will of God to the end that man may enter into fellowship with God, the question arises as to how far revelation will be accommodated by the limitation of its sphere. How far does it seek to form the mind and how far does it leave the mind to its own laws and to historical educative forces? Four foundation principles seem to be sufficiently clear: (a) Revelation accepts and uses at every stage of its history such materials from the common stock of human ideas as are true and of permanent worth. The superstructure of revelation rests upon a foundation of universal and fundamental human convictions. It appeals continually to the rooted instructs and regulative ideas of the human soul deeply implanted as a preparation for revelation. (b) Regard is paid in Scripture to man's nature as free and responsible. He is a rational being who must be taught through persuasion; he is a moral being who must be controlled through his conscience and will. There must be, therefore, throughout the process of revelation an element of free, spontaneous, unforced life in and through which the supernatural factors work. (c) Revelation must have reference, even in its earliest phases of development, to the organism of truth as a whole. What is actually given at any time must contribute its quota to the ultimate summing up and completion of the entire process. (d) Revelation must guard against injurious errors which trench upon essential and vital matters. In short, the consistency and integrity of the movement through which truth is brought to disclosure must sacredly be guarded; while, at the same time, since it is God and man who are coming to know each other, revelation must be set in a broad environment of human life and entrusted to the processes of history.
See REVELATION.
4. The Outcome of Revelation: It is now our task briefly to notice how in Scripture these interests are safeguarded. We must notice (a) the principle of accommodation in general. It has often been pointed out that in every book of the Bible the inimitable physiognomy of the writer and the age is preserved; that the Biblical language with reference to Nature is the language of phenomena; that its doctrines are stated vividly, tropically, concretely and in the forms of speech natural to the age in which they were uttered; that its historical documents are, for the most part, artless annals of the ancient oriental type, that it contains comparatively little information concerning Nature or man which anticipates scientific discovery or emancipates the religious man who accepts it as a guide from going to school to Nature and human experience for such information. All this, of course, without touching upon disputed points or debated questions of fact, involves, from the point of view of the Divine mind to which all things are known, and of the human mind to which certain facts of Nature hidden in antiquity have been disclosed, the principles of accommodation. Over against this we must set certain contrasting facts:
(b) The Scripture shows a constant tendency to transcend itself and to bring the teaching of the truth to a higher level. The simple, primitive ideas and rites of the patriarchal age are succeeded by the era of organized national life with its ideal of unity and the intensified sense of national calling and destiny under the leadership of God. The national idea of church and kingdom broadens out into the universal conception and world-wide mission of Christianity. The sacrificial symbolism of the Old Testament gives way to the burning ethical realities of the Incarnate Life. The self-limitation of the Incarnation broadens out into the world-wide potencies of the era of the Spirit who uses the letter of Scripture as the instrument of His universal ministry. It is thus seen that by the progressive method through a cumulative process God has gradually transcended the limitation of His instruments while at the same time He has continuously broadened and deepened the Spirit of man to receive His self-disclosure.
(c) More than this, Scripture throughout is marked by a certain distract and unmistakable quality of timelessness. It continually urges and suggests the infinite, the eternal, the unchangeable. It is part of the task of revelation to anticipate so as to guide progress. At every stage it keeps the minds of men on the stretch with a truth that they are not able at that stage easily to apprehend. The inexhaustible vastness and the hidden fullness of truth are everywhere implied. Prophets and Apostles are continually in travail with truths brought to their own ages from afar. The great fundamental verities of Scripture are stated with uncompromising fullness and finality. There is no accommodation to human weakness or error. Its ideals, its standards, its conditions are absolute and inviolate.
Not only has Israel certain fundamental ideas which are peculiar to herself, but there has been an organizing spirit, an "unique spirit of inspiration" which has modified and transformed the materials held by her in common with her Semitic kindred. Even her inherited ideas and Institutions are transformed and infused with new meanings. We note the modification of Semitic customs, as for example in blood revenge, by which savagery has been mitigated and evil associations eliminated. We note the paucity of mythological material. If the stories of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Samson were originally mythological, they have ceased to be such in the Bible. They have been humanized and stripped of superhuman features. (See Fable,"HGHL , 220 ff.)
If we yield to the current hypothesis as to the Babylonian background of the narratives in Gen, we are still more profoundly impressed with that unique assimilative power, working in Israel, which has enabled the Biblical writers to eradicate the deep-seated polytheism of the Babylonian documents and to stamp upon them the inimitable features of their own high monotheism (see BABYLO NlA). We note the reserve of Scripture, the constant restraint exercised upon the imagination, the chastened doctrinal sobriety in the Bible references to angels and demons, in its Apocalyptic imagery, in its Messianic promises, in its doctrines of rewards and punishments. In all these particulars the Bible stands unique by contrast, not merely with popular thought, but with the extra-canonical literature of the Jewish people (see DEMON, etc.).
5. The Question as to Christ's Method: We come at this point upon a most central and difficult problem. It is, of course, alleged that Christ adopted the attitude of concurrence, which was also one of accommodation, in popular views concerning angels and demons, etc. It is disputed whether this goes back to the essential accommodation involved in the self-limiting of the Incarnation so that as man He should share the views of His contemporaries, or whether, with wider knowledge, He accommodated Himself for pedagogical purposes to erroneous views of the untaught people about Him (see DCG , article "Accommodation"). The question is complicated by our ignorance of the facts. We cannot say that Jesus accommodated Himself to the ignorance of the populace unless we are ready to pronounce authoritatively upon the truth or falseness of the popular theory. It is not our province in this article to enter upon that discussion (see INCARNATION and KENOSIS). We can only point out that the reserve of the New Testament and the absence of all imaginative extravagance shows that if accommodation has been applied it is most strictly limited in its scope. In this it is in harmony with the entire method of Scripture, where the ignorance of men is regarded in the presentation of God's truth, while at the same time their growing minds are protected against the errors which would lead them astray from the direct path of progress into the whole truth reserved in the Divine counsel.
LITERATURE.
(a) For the first division of the subject consult standard works on Science of Interpretation and Homiletics sub loc.
(b) For second division, among others, Dr. A. B. Davidson, Old Testament Prophecy; Dr. Willis J. Beecher, Prophets and Promise.
(c) For the third division, the most helpful single work is the one quoted: Mozley, Ruling Ideas in Early Ages, published by Longmans as "Old Testament Lectures."
Louis Matthews Sweet
Accomplish
Accomplish - a-kom'-plish: Richly represented in the Old Testament by seven Hebrew synonyms and in the New Testament by five Greek (the King James Version); signifying in Hebrew (1) "to complete" (Lamentations 4:11); (2) "to fulfill" (Daniel 9:2); (3) "to execute" (1 Kings 5:9); (4) "to set apart" i.e. "consecrate" (Leviticus 22:21); (5) "to establish" (Jeremiah 44:25 the King James Version); (6) "to have pleasure in" (Job 14:6); (7) "to perfect" (Psalms 64:6); in Greek (1) "to finish" (Acts 21:5); (2) "to bring to an end" (Hebrews 9:6); (3) "to be fulfilled" (Luke 2:6); (4) "to fill out" (Luke 9:31); (5) "to complete" (Luke 12:50).
Accord; According; Accordingly
Accord; According; Accordingly - a-kord', a-kord'-ing-li: In Old Testament, peh, "mouth," "to fight with one accord" (Joshua 9:2) lephi, "according to the mouth of," "according to their families" (Genesis 47:12, "acc. to (the number of) their little ones" the Revised Version, margin). In Isaiah 59:18 the same Hebrew word, ke`al, is rendered "according to" and "accordingly." In New Testament homothumadon, indicative of harmony of mind or action, Acts, Isaiah 1:14; 2:22; 7:25; 18:7) and kata, of the same mind .... according to Christ Jesus (Romans 15:5); automatos, "of itself," "without constraint," "opened to them of its own accord" (Acts 12:10), i.e. without human agency (compare Leviticus 25:5 the King James Version; Mark 4:28); authairetos, "of his own free choice" (2 Corinthians 8:17). God "will render to every man according to his works" (Romans 2:6), that is, agreeably to the nature of his works (1 Corinthians 3:8), but salvation is not according to works (2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 3:5).
See DEED.
M. O. Evans
Accos
Accos - ak'-os (Hakchos): The grandfather of Eupolemus, whom Judas Maccabeus sent with others to Rome in 161 BC, to negotiate a "league of amity and confederacy" (1 Maccabees 8:17). The name occurs In the Old Testament as Hakkoz (haqqots), who was a priest in the reign of David (1 Chronicles 24:10).
Account
Account - a-kount'.
See ACCOUNTABILITY.
Accountability
Accountability - a-koun-ta-bil'-i-ti.
1. Scriptural Principles: The general teaching of Scripture on this subject is summarized in Romans 14:12: "So then each one of us shall give account of himself to God." But this implies, on the one hand, the existence of a Moral Ruler of the universe, whose will is revealed, and, on the other the possession by the creature of knowledge and free will In Romans 4:15 it is expressly laid down that, `where no law is, neither is there transgression'; but, lest this might seem to exclude from accountability those to whom the law of Moses was not given, it is shown that even heathen had the law to some extent revealed in conscience; so that they are "without excuse" (Romans 1:20). "For as many as have sinned without the law shall also perish without the law: and as many as have sinned under the law shall be judged by the law" (Romans 2:12). So says Paul in a passage which is one of the profoundest discussions on the subject of accountability, and with his sentiment agrees exactly the word of our Lord on the same subject, in Luke 12:47-48: "And that servant, who knew his lord's will, and made not ready, nor did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes And to whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required: and to whom they commit much, of him will they ask the more." There is a gradual development of accountability accompanying the growth of a human being from infancy to maturity; and there is a similar development in the race, as knowledge grows from less to more. In the full light of the gospel human beings are far more responsible than they were in earlier stages of intellectual and spiritual development, and the doom to which they will be exposed on the day of account will be heavy in proportion to their privileges. This may seem to put too great a premium on ignorance; and a real difficulty arises when we say that, the more of moral sensitiveness there is, the greater is the guilt; because as is well known, moral sensitiveness can be lost through persistent disregard of conscience; from which it might seem to follow that the way to diminish guilt was to silence the voice of conscience. There must, however, be a difference between the responsibility of a conscience that has never been enlightened and that of one which, having once been enlightened, has lost, through neglect or recklessness, the goodness once possessed. In the practice of the law, for example, it is often claimed that a crime committed under the influence of intoxication should be condoned; yet everyone must feel how different this is from innocence, and that, before a higher tribunal, the culprit will be held to be twice guilty--first, of the sin of drunkenness and then of the crime.
2. Connection with Immortality: Wherever civilization is so advanced that there exists a code of public law, with punishments attached to transgression, there goes on a constant education in the sense of accountability; and even the heathen mind, in classical times, had advanced so far as to believe in a judgment beyond the veil, when the shades had to appear before the tribunal of Rhadamanthus, Minos and AEacus, to have their station and degree in the underworld decided according to the deeds done in the body. How early the Hebrews had made as much progress has to be discussed in connection with the doctrine of immortality; but it is certain that, before the Old Testament canon closed, they believed not only in a judgment after death but in resurrection, by which the sense of accountability was fastened far more firmly on the popular mind. Long before, however, there was awakened by the sacred literature the sense of a judgment of God going on during the present life and expressing itself in everyone's condition. The history of the world was the Judgment of the world; prosperity attended the steps of the good man, but retribution sooner or later struck down the wicked. It was from the difficulty of reconciling with this belief the facts of life that the skepticism of Hebrew thought arose; but by the same constraint the pious mind was pushed forward in the direction of the full doctrine of immortality. This came with the advent of Him who brought life and immortality to light by His gospel (2 Timothy 1:10). In the mind of Jesus not only were resurrection, judgment and immortality unquestionable postulates; but He was brought into a special connection with accountability through His consciousness of being the Judge of mankind, and, in His numerous references to the Last Judgment, He developed the principles upon which the conscience will then be tried, and by which accordingly it ought now to try itself. In this connection the Parable of the Talents is of special significance; but it is by the grandiose picture of the scene itself, which follows in the same chapter of the First Gospel, that the mind of Christendom has been most powerfully influenced. Reference has already been made to the discussions at the commencement of the Epistle to the Romans in which our subject finds a place. By some the apostle John has been supposed to revert to the Old Testament notion of a judgment proceeding now in place of coming at the Last Day; but Weiss (Der johanneische Lehrbegriff, II, 9) has proved that this is a mistake.
3. Joint and Corporate Responsibility: Up to this point we have spoken of individual accountability, but the subject becomes more complicated when we think of the joint responsibility of several or many persons. From the first the human mind has been haunted by what is called the guilt of Adam's first sin. There is a solidarity in the human race, and the inheritance of evil is too obvious to be denied even by the most optimistic. There is far, however, from being agreement of opinion as to the relation of the individual to this evil legacy; some contending fiercely against the idea that the individual can have any personal responsibility for a sin hidden in a past so distant and shadowy, while others maintain that the misery which has certainly been inherited by all can only be justified in a world governed by a God of justice if the guilt of all precedes the misery. The question enters deeply into the Pauline scheme, although at the most critical point it is much disputed what the Apostle's real position is. While joint responsibility burdens the individual conscience, it may, at the same time, be said to lighten it. Thus, in Ezekiel 18:1-32 one of the most weighty ethical discussions to be found in Holy Writ is introduced with the popular proverb, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge," which proves to be a way of saying that the responsibility of children is lightened, if not abolished, through their connection with their parents. In the same way, at the present time, the sense of responsibility is enfeebled in many minds through the control over character and destroy ascribed to heredity and environment. Even criminality is excused on the ground that many have never had a chance of virtue, and it is contended that to know everything is to forgive everything. There can be no doubt that, as the agents of trusts and partnerships, men will allow themselves to do what they would never have thought of in private business; and in a crowd the individual sustains psychological modifications by which he is made to act very differently from his ordinary self. In the actions of nations, such as war, there is a vast and solemn responsibility somewhere; but it is often extremely difficult to locate whether in the ruler, the ministry or the people. So interesting and perplexing are such problems often that a morality for bodies of people, as distinguished from individuals, is felt by many to be the great desideratum of ethics at the present time.
On this subject something will be found in most of the works on either philosophical or Christian ethics; see especially Lemme's Christliche Ethik, 242 ff.
James Stalker
Accoz
Accoz - ak'-oz (Akbos; the Revised Version (British and American) AKKOS, which see): 1 Esdras 5:38, head of one of the priestly families, which returned from the Exile, but was unable to prove its descent, when the register was searched. See also Ezra 2:61.
Accursed
Accursed - a-kurs'-ed, a-kurst': In the Book of Josh (6:17,18; 7:1,11,12,13,15) and 1 Ch (2:7) "accursed" (or "accursed thing" or "thing accursed") is the King James Version rendering of the Hebrew word, cherem. The the Revised Version (British and American) consistently uses "devoted" or "devoted thing," which the King James Version also adopts in Leviticus 27:21, 28-29 and in Numbers 18:14. "Cursed thing" is the rendering in two passages (Deuteronomy 7:26; 13:17); and in one passage (Ezekiel 44:29 the King James Version) "dedicated thing" is used. In four places the King James Version renders the word by "curse" (Joshua 6:18; Isaiah 34:5; 43:28; Malachi 3:18; (Malachi 4:6)) whilst in, another passage (Zechariah 14:11) "utter destruction" is adopted in translation. These various renderings are due to the fact that the word cherem sometimes means the act of devoting or banning (or the condition or state resulting therefrom and sometimes the object devoted or banned. We occasionally find periphrastic renderings, e.g. 1 Samuel 15:21: "the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed," the King James Version (literally, "the chief part of the ban"); 1 Kings 20:42: "a man whom I appointed to utter destruction," the King James Version (literally, "a man of my ban" (or "banning"). The root-word meant "to separate," "shut off." The Arabic charim denoted the precincts of the temple at Mecca, and also the women's apartment (whence the word "harem"). In Hebrew the word always suggested "separating" or "devoting to God." Just as qadhosh, meant "holy" or "consecrated to the service" of Yahweh, and so not liable to be used for ordinary or secular purposes, so the stem of cherem meant "devoting" to Yahweh anything which would, if spared, corrupt or contaminate the religious life of Israel, with the further idea of destroying (things) or exterminating (persons) as the surest way of avoiding such contamination. Everything that might paganize or affect the unique character of the religion of Israel was banned, e.g. idols (Deuteronomy 7:26); idolatrous persons (Exodus 22:20); idolatrous cities (Deuteronomy 13:13-18). All Canaanite towns--where the cult of Baal flourished--were to be banned (Deuteronomy 20:16-18). The ban did not always apply to the gold and silver of looted cities (Joshua 6:24). Such valuable articles were to be placed in the "treasury of the house of Yahweh." This probably indicates a slackening of the rigid custom which involved the total destruction of the spoil. According to Numbers 18:14, "everything devoted in Israel" belonged to Aaron, and Ezekiel 44:29 the King James Version ordained that "every dedicated thing" should belong to the priests (compare Ezra 10:8). In the New Testament "accursed" is the King James Version rendering of ANATHEMA (which see).
Thomas Lewis
Accuser
Accuser - a-kuz'-er: This word, not found in the Old Testament, is the rendering of two Greek words: (1) kategoros, that is, a prosecutor, or plaintiff in a lawsuit, or one who speaks in a derogatory way of another (Acts 23:30, 35; 16, 18; Revelation 12:10); (2) diabolos, meaning adversary or enemy. This word is rendered "accuser" in the King James Version and "slanderer" in the Revised Version (British and American) and the American Standard Revised Version (2 Timothy 3:3; Titus 2:3). According to the rabbinic teaching Satan, or the devil, was regarded as hostile to God and man, and that it was a part of his work to accuse the latter of disloyalty and sin before the tribunal of the former (see Job 1:6 ff; Zechariah 3:1 f; Revelation 12:10).
W. W. Davies
Aceldama
Aceldama - a-sel'-da-ma.
See AKELDAMA.
Achaia
Achaia - a-ka'-ya (Achaia): The smallest country in the Peloponnesus lying along the southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, north of Arcadia and east of Elis. The original inhabitants were Ionians, but these were crowded out later by the Acheans, who came from the East. According to Herodotus, the former founded twelve cities, many of which retain their original names to this day. These cities were on the coast and formed a confederation of smaller communities, which in the last century of the independent history of Greece attained to great importance (Achaean League). In Roman times the term Achaia was used to include the whole of Greece, exclusive of Thessaly. Today Achaia forms with Elis one district, and contains a population of nearly a quarter of a million. The old Achean League was renewed in 280 BC, but became more important in 251, when Aratus of Sicyon was chosen commander-in-chief. This great man increased the power of the League and gave it an excellent constitution, which our own great practical politicians, Hamilton and Madison, consulted, adopting many of its prominent devices, when they set about framing the Constitution of the United States. In 146 BC Corinth was destroyed and the League broken up (see 1 Maccabees 15:23); and the whole of Greece, under the name of Achaia, was transformed into a Roman province, which was divided into two separate provinces, Macedonia and Achaia, in 27BC .
In Acts 18:12 we are told that the Jews in Corinth made insurrection against Paul when Gallio was deputy of Achaia, and in Acts 18:27 that Apollos was making preparations to set out for Achaia In Romans 16:5, "Achaia" should read "ASIA" as in the Revised Version (British and American). In Acts 20:2 "Greece" means Achaia, but the oft-mentioned "Macedonia and Achaia" generally means the whole of Greece (Acts 19:21; Romans 15:26; 1 Thessalonians 1:8). Paul commends the churches of Achaia for their liberality (2 Corinthians 9:13).
LITERATURE.
See Gerhard, Ueber den Volksstamm der A. (Berlin, 1854); Klatt, Forschungen zur Geschichte des achaischen Bundes (Berlin, 1877); M. Dubois, Les ligues etolienne et acheenne (Paris, 1855); Capes, History of the Achean League (London, 1888); Mahaffy, Problems, 177-86; Busolt, Greek Staatsalter, 2nd edition (1892), 347 ff; Toeppfer, in Pauly's Realencyclopaedie.
For Aratus see Hermann, Staatsalter, 1885; Krakauer, Abhandlung ueber Aratus (Breslau, 1874); Neumeyer, Aratus aus Sikyon (Leipzig, 1886); Holm, History of Greece.
J. E. Harry
Achaicus
Achaicus - a-ka'-i-kus (Achaikos, "belonging to Achaia"): A name honorably conferred upon L. Mummius, conqueror of Corinth and Achaia (compare CORINTH). Achaicus was one of the leaders of the Corinthian church (to be inferred from 1 Corinthians 16:15 ff) who, visiting Paul at Ephesus with Stephanas and Fortunatus, greatly relieved the Apostle's anxiety for the Corinthian church (compare 1 Corinthians 5:1 ff). Paul admonishes the members of the Cor church to submit to their authority (compare 1 Thessalonians 5:12) and to acknowledge their work (1 Corinthians 16:15 ff).
Achan
Achan - a'-kan (`akhan (in 1 Chronicles 2:7 Achar, `akhar, "troubler"): The descendant of Zerah the son of Judah who was put to death, in Joshua's time, for stealing some of the "devoted" spoil of the city of Jericho (Joshua 7:1-26). The stem `akhan is not used in Hebrew except in this name. The stem `akhar has sufficient use to define it. It denotes trouble of the most serious kind--Jacob's trouble when his sons had brought him into blood feud with his Canaanite neighbors, or Jephthah's trouble when his vow required him to sacrifice his daughter (Genesis 34:30; Judges 11:35). In Prov (Judges 11:17, 29; 6, 20) the word is used with intensity to describe the results of cruelty, disloyalty, greed, wickedness. The record especially speaks of Achan's conduct as the troubling of Israel (1 Chronicles 2:7; Joshua 6:18; 7:24). In an outburst of temper Jonathan speaks of Saul as having troubled the land (1 Samuel 14:29). Elijah and Ahab accuse each the other of being the troubler of Israel (1 Kings 18:17-18). The stem also appears in the two proper names ACHOR and OCHRAN (which see).
The crime of Achan was a serious one. Quite apart from all questions of supposable superstition, or even religion, the cherem concerning Jericho had been proclaimed, and to disobey the proclamation was disobedience to military orders in an army that was facing the enemy. It is commonly held that Achan's family were put to death with him, though they were innocent; but the record is not explicit on these points. One whose habits of thought lead him to expect features of primitive savagery in such a case as this will be sure to find what he expects; a person of different habits will not be sure that the record says that any greater cruelty was practiced on the family of Achan than that of compelling them to be present at the execution. Those who hold that the Deuteronomic legislation comes in any sense from Moses should not be in haste to think that its precepts were violated by Joshua in the case of Achan (see Deuteronomy 24:16).
The record says that the execution took place in the arable valley of Achor, up from the Jordan valley.
See ACHOR.
Willis J. Beecher
Achar
Achar - a'-kar: Variant of ACHAN, which see.
Achaz
Achaz - a'-kaz (Achaz), the King James Version (Matthew 1:9): Greek form of Ahaz (thus the Revised Version (British and American)). The name of a King of Israel.
Achbor
Achbor - ak'-bor (`akhbor, "mouse"):
(1) The father of Baal-hanan, who was the seventh of the eight kings who reigned in Edom before there were kings in Israel (Genesis 36:38-39; 1 Chronicles 1:49).
(2) The son of Micaiah (called in Chronicles Abdon the son of Micah) who went with Hilkiah the priest and other high officials, at the command of King Josiah, to consult Huldah the prophetess concerning the book that had been found (2 Kings 22:12, 14; 2 Chronicles 34:20).
It may be presumed that this Achbor is also the man mentioned in Jer (26:22; 36:12) as the father of Elnathan, who went to Egypt for King Jehoiakim in order to procure the extradition of Uriah the prophet, and who protested against the burning of Baruch's roll.
Willis J. Beecher
Achiacharus
Achiacharus - a-ki-ak'-a-rus (Codex Vaticanus Achiacharos; Acheicharos): Governor of Assyria. Achiacharus is the son of Anael, a brother of Tobit (Tobit 1:21). Sarchedonus (Esarhaddon), the king of Assyria, appointed him over all "accounts of his kingdom" and over all "his affairs" (Tobit 1:21 f; compare Daniel 2:48). At his request Tobit comes to Nineveh (Tobit 1:22). Achiacharus nourishes Tobit, while the latter is afflicted with disease (Tobit 2:10). He attends the wedding-feast of Tobias (Tobit 11:18). Is persecuted by Aman, but saved (Tobit 14:10).
Achias
Achias - a-ki'-as: An ancestor of Ezra (2 Esdras 1:2). Omitted in other genealogies.
Achim
Achim - a'-kim (Acheim): A descendant of Zerubbabel and ancestor of Jesus, mentioned only in Matthew 1:14.
Achior
Achior - a'-ki-or (Achior): General of the Ammonites, who spoke in behalf of Israel before Holofernes, the Assyrian general (Judith 5:5 ff). Holofernes ordered him bound and delivered at Bethulia to the Israelites (Judith 6), who received him gladly and with honor. Afterward he became a proselyte, was circumcised, and joined to Israel (Judith 14). In Numbers 34:27 it is the Septuagint reading for Ahihud, and in the Hebrew would be 'achi'or, "brother of light."
Achipha
Achipha - ak'-i-fa; the King James Version Acipha, as'-i-fa (Achipha), in the Apocrypha (1 Esdras 5:31) head of one of the families of the temple-servants, who returned with Zerubbabel, same as the Old Testament HAKUPHA (Ezra 2:51; Nehemiah 7:53), which see.
Achish
Achish - a'-kish ('akhish): King of the city of Gath in the days of David. His father's name is given as Maoch (1 Samuel 27:2), and Maacah (1 Kings 2:39). David sought the protection of Achish when he first fled from Saul, and just after his visit to Nob (1 Samuel 21:10-15). Fearing rough treatment or betrayal by Achish, he feigned madness. But this made him unwelcome, whereupon he fled to the Cave of Adullam (1 Samuel 22:1). Later in his fugitive period David returned to Gath to be hospitably received by Achish (1 Samuel 27:1 ff), who gave him the town of Ziklag for his home. A year later, when the Philistines invaded the land of Israel, in the campaign which ended so disastrously for Saul (1 Samuel 31:1-13), Achish wished David to participate (1 Samuel 28:1-2), but the lords of the Philistines objected so strenuously, when they found him and his men with the forces of Achish, that Achish was compelled to send them back. Achish must have been a young man at this time, for he was still ruling forty years later at the beginning of Solomon's reign (1 Kings 2:39). He is mentioned as Abimelech in the title of Psalms 34:1-22.
See ABIMELECH.
Edward Mack
Achitob
Achitob - ak'-i-tob: Same as Ahitob. Used in 1 Esdras 8:2; compare 2 Esdras 1:1 the King James Version.
See AHITUB 3.
Achmetha
Achmetha - ak'-me-tha (Ezra 6:2; 'achmetha'; Septuagint Amatha; Peshitta achmathan; in Tiglath Pileser's inscription circa 1100 BC Amadana: in Darius' Behistun Inscr., II, 76-78, Hangmatana = "Place of Assembly"; Agbatana, in Herodotus; Ekbatana, Xenophon, etc.; so 1 Esdras 6:23; Tobit 3:7; 6:5; 7:1; 12, 14; Judith 1:1, 2, 14; 2 Maccabees 9:3; Talmud hamdan; now hamadan).
1. Location: This, the ancient capital of Media, stood (lat 34 degrees 50' North--long. 48 degrees 32' East) near the modern Hamadan, 160 miles West-Southwest of Tehran, almost 6,000 feet above the sea, circa 1 1/2 miles from the foot of Mt. Orontes (Alvand).
2. History: It was founded or rebuilt by Deiokes (Dayaukku) about 700 BC on the site of Ellippi an ancient city of the Manda, and captured by Cyrus 549 BC who brought Croesus there as captive (Herodotus i.153). It was the capital of the 10th Nome under Darius I. Cyrus and other Persian kings used to spend the two summer months there yearly, owing to the comparative coolness of the climate. Herodotus describes it as a magnificent city fortified with seven concentric walls (i.98). Its citadel (biretha', Ezra 6:2, wrongly rendered "palace" in the Revised Version (British and American)) is mentioned by Arrian, who says that, when Alexander took the city in 324 BC, he there stored his enormous booty. In it the royal archives were kept. It stood on a hill, where later was built a temple of Mithra. Polybius (x.27) speaks of the great strength of the citadel. Though the city was unwalled in his time, he can hardly find words to express is admiration for it, especially for the magnificent royal palace, nearly 7 stadia in circumference, built of precious kinds of wood sheathed in plates of grid and silver. In the city was the shrine of Aine (Nanaea, Anahita?). Alexander is said to have destroyed a temple of AEsculapius (Mithra?) there. Diodorus tells us the city was 250 stadia in circumference. On Mt. Alvand (10,728 feet) there have been found inscriptions of Xerxes. Doubtless Ecbatana was one of the "cities of the Medes" to which Israel was carried captive (2 Kings 17:6). It should be noted that Greek writers mention several other Ecbatanas. One of these, afterward called Gazaca (Takhti Sulaiman, a little South of Lake Urmi, lat. 36 degrees 28' North, long. 47 degrees 9' East) was capital of Atropatene. It was almost destroyed by the Mughuls in the 12th century. Sir H. Rawlinson identifies the Ecbatana of Tobit and Herodotus with this northern city. The southern and far more important Ecbatana which we have described is certainly that of 2 Maccabees 9:3. It was Cyrus' Median capital, and is doubtless that of Ezra 6:2. Classical writers spoke erroneously of Ecbatana (for Ecbatana) as moderns too often do of Hamadan for Hamadan.
3. Present Condition: Hamadan has perhaps never fully recovered from the fearful massacre made there in 1220 AD by the Mongols, but its population is about 50,000, including a considerable number of descendants of the Israelites of the Dispersion (tracing descent from Asher, Naphtali, etc.). They point to the tombs of Esther and Mordecai in the neighborhood. It is a center for the caravan trade between Baghdad and Tehran. There is an American Presbyterian mission at work.
Authorities (besides those quoted above): Ctesias, Curtius, Amm. Marcellinus, Pausanias, Strabo, Diod. Siculus; Ibnu'l Athir, Yaqut, Jahangusha, Jami`u't Tawarikh, and modern travelers.
W. St. Clair Tisdall
Acho
Acho - ak'-o.
See ACCO.
Achor
Achor - a'-kor (`akhor, "trouble," the idea of the word being that of trouble which is serious and extreme. See ACHAN): The place where Achan was executed in the time of Joshua (Joshua 7:24, 26). In all the five places where it is mentioned it is described as the `emek, the arable valley of Achor. There is no ground in the record for the current idea that it must have been a locality with horrid and dismal physical features. It was on a higher level than the camp of Israel in the Jordan valley, and on a lower level than Debir--a different Debir from that of Joshua 15:15. In a general way, as indicated by the points mentioned in the border of Judah, it was north of Betharabah, and south of Debir (Joshua 7:24; 15:7). Many identify it with the Wady Kelt which descends through a deep ravine from the Judean hills and runs between steep banks south of the modern Jericho to Jordan, the stream after rams becoming a foaming torrent. Possibly the name may have been applied to a region of considerable extent. In Isaiah 65:10 it is a region on the east side of the mountain ridge which is in some sense balanced with Sharon on the west side. By implication the thing depicted seems to be these rich agricultural localities so far recovered from desolation as to be good grounds for cattle and sheep. Hosea recognizes the comforting aspect of the dreadful affair in the valley of Achor; it was a doorway of hope to pardoned Israel (Hosea 2:15 (17)), and he hopes for like acceptance for the Israel of his own day.
Willis J. Beecher
Achsa
Achsa - ak'-sa: Used in the King James Version in 1 Chronicles 2:49 for ACHSAH, which see.
Achsah
Achsah - ak'-sa (`akhchah; in some copies `akhca' in 1 Chronicles 2:49), "anklet"): The daughter of Caleb whom he gave in marriage to his younger kinsman Othniel the son of Kenaz, as a reward for smiting Kiriath-sepher (Joshua 15:16 ff; Judges 1:12 ff). Caleb, the narrative says, established Achsah in the South-country, and in addition, at her asking, gave her certain important springs of water--the "upper basins" and the "nether basins." Professor G. F. Moore identifies these with the groups of springs in Seit ed-Dilbeh (notes on Jdg in Polychrome Bible).
Willis J. Beecher
Achshaph
Achshaph - ak'-shaf ('akhshaph, "sorcery," or "fascination"): A city in the northern part of the territory conquered by Joshua. The king of Achshaph was a member of the coalition against Israel under Jabin and Sisera. It is mentioned with Hazor, Megiddo, Taanach, etc., in the list of conquered kings. It is one of the cities marking the boundaries of the tribe of Asher (Joshua 11:1; 12:20; 19:25). Several attempts have been made to identify the site of it, but explorers are not agreed as to the identification.
Achzib
Achzib - ak'-zib ('akhzibh, "lying" or "disappointing"): The name of two towns in Palestine: (1) A town in western Judah in the lowlands, mentioned in connection with Mareshah and Keilah as one of the cities allotted to Judah (Joshua 15:44), and in Mic (Joshua 1:14), where it suggests play upon its meaning, "deceptive" or "failing," possibly the place having received its name from a winter spring or brook, which failed in summer. It is also called Chezib (kezibh (Genesis 38:5)), where Judah was at the time of the birth of his son Shelah. In 1 Chronicles 4:22 it is called Cozeba, the King James Version "Chozeba" (kozebha'), clearly seen to be the same as Achzib, from the places with which it is grouped. (2) It has been identified with the modern `Ayin-Kezbeh in the valley of Elah, and north of Adullam.
Edward Mack
(3) Mod Zib Septuagint variously: Joshua 19:29, Codex Vaticanus, Echozob, Codex Alexandrinus, Achzeiph; Judges 1:31, Codex Vaticanus, Aschazei, Codex Alexandrinus, Aschendei, Greek Ecdippa: A small town some miles north of Acre on the coast. It is mentioned in Joshua 19:29 as falling within the possessions of the tribe of Asher, but they never occupied it, as they did not the neighboring Acre (Acco). The Phoenician inhabitants of the coast were too strongly entrenched to be driven out by a people who had no fleet. The cities on the coast doubtless aided one another, and Sidon had become rich and powerful before this and could succor such a small town in case of attack. Achzib was a coast town, nine miles north of Acco, now known as Ez-Zib. It appears in the Assyrian inscriptions as Aksibi and Sennacherib enumerates it among the Phoenician towns that he took at the same times as Acco (702 BC). It was never important and is now an insignificant village among the sand dunes of the coast. It was the bordertown of Galilee on the west, what lay beyond being unholy ground.
H. Porter
Acipha
Acipha - as'-i-fa.
See ACHIPHA.
Acitho; Acithoh
Acitho; Acithoh - as'-i-tho (variant of AHITUB): The name in the King James Version of an ancestor of Judith (Judith 8:1).
Acknowledge
Acknowledge - ak-nol'-ej (gignosko): To declare that one recognizes the claims of a person or thing fully established. Both in Old Testament and New Testament expressed by various forms of the word "know" (Proverbs 3:6; Isaiah 61:9; Colossians 2:2 the King James Version). The Psalmist (Psalms 32:5) "acknowledged" his sin, when he told God that he knew the guilt of what he had done. The Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1:14) "acknowledged" Paul and his companions when they formally recognized their claims and authority.
Acquaint; Acquaintance
Acquaint; Acquaintance - a-kwant', a-kwan'-tans (gnostoi): Terms referring to various degrees of knowledge, but implying more or less detailed information; applied to God's omniscience (Psalms 139:3), to the grief of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh (Isaiah 53:3), and to the knowledge which man should have of God. The noun in the concrete, unless limited by a qualifying term, means more than one who has been known simply in passing, and implies a degree of intimacy, as may be seen in Luke 2:44; 23:49; 2 Kings 12:5.
H. E. Jacobs
Acra
Acra - ak'-ra, a'-kra (1 Maccabees 1:33 the Revised Version (British and American), "citadel").
See JERUSALEM.
Acrabattene
Acrabattene - ak-ra-ba-te'-ne.
See AKRABATTINE (in the Apocrypha).
Acrabbim
Acrabbim - ak-rab'-im: Incorrect transliteration of `aqrabbim, of Joshua 15:3 in the King James Version.
See AKRABBIM.
Acre (1)
Acre (1) - a'-ker, a'-ker.
See ACCO.
Acre (2)
Acre (2) - a'-ker (tsemedh): A term of land-measurement used twice in the English versions of the Bible (Isaiah 5:10; 1 Samuel 14:14), and said to be the only term in square measure found in the Old Testament. The English word "acre" originally signified field. Then it came to denote the measure of land that an ox team could plow in a day, and upon the basis of a maximum acre of this kind the standard acre of 160 square rods (with variations in different regions) was fixed. The Hebrew word translated acre denotes a yoke of animals, in the sense of a team, a span, a pair; it is never used to denote the yoke by which the team are coupled together. The phrase `ten yokes of vineyard' (Isaiah 5:10) may naturally mean vineyard covering as much land as a team would plow in ten days, though other plausible meanings can also be suggested. In 1 Samuel 14:14 the same word is used in describing the limits of space within which Jonathan and his armor-bearer slew twenty Philistines. The translation of the Revised Version (British and American), "within as it were half a furrow's length in an acre of land," means, strictly, that they were slain along a line from two to twenty rods in length. The word rendered "furrow," used only here and in Psalms 129:3, is in Brown's Hebrew Lexicon defined as "plowing-ground." This gives the rendering "as it were in half a plowing-stint, a yoke of ground," the last two phrases defining each the other, so that the meaning is substantially that of the paraphrase in the King James Version. There is here an alleged obscurity and uncertainty in the text, but it is not such as to affect either the translation or the nature of the event.
Willis J. Beecher
Acrostic
Acrostic - a-kros'-tik: The acrostic, understood as a short poem in which the first letters of the lines form a word, or name, or sentence, has not yet been proved to occur in ancient Hebrew literature. The supposed examples found by some scholars in Psalms 2:1-4 and Psalms 110:1-4 b are not generally recognized. Still less can be said in favor of the suggestion that in Esther 1:20 four words read from left to right form by their initials an acrostic on the name YHWH (compare Konig, Einleitung 293). In Byzantine hymn-poetry the term acrostichis with which our word "acrostic" is connected was also used of alphabetical poems, that is poems the lines or groups of lines in which have their initials arranged in the order of the alphabet. Acrostics of this kind are found in pre-Christian Hebrew literature as well as elsewhere in ancient oriental literature. There are twelve clear instances in the Old Testament: Psalms 25:1-22; Psalms 34:1-22; Psalms 37:1-40; Psalms 111:1-10 f; Psalms 119:1-176; Psalms 145:1-21; Proverbs 31:10-31, and Lamentations 1:1-22 through Lamentations 4:1-22. There is probably an example in Psalms 9:1-20 and 10, and possibly another in Nab 1:2-10. Outside the Canon, Sirach 51:13-30 exhibits clear traces of alphabetic arrangement. Each of these fifteen poems must briefly be discussed.
Psalms 9:1-20 and Psalms 10:1-18, which are treated as one psalm in Septuagint and Vulg, give fairly clear indications of original alphabetic structure even in the Massoretic Text. The initials of Psalms 9:1, 3, 5 are respectively 'aleph, beth, gimel; of Psalms 9:9, 11, 13, 15, 17 waw, zayin, cheth, Teth and yodh. Psalms 10:1 begins with lamedh and Psalms 10:12, 14-15, 17 with qoph, resh, shin and taw. Four lines seem to have been allotted to each letter in the original form of the poem. In Psalms 25:1-22 all the letters are represented except waw and qoph. In 25:18 we find resh instead of the latter as well as in its place in 25:19. In 25:2 the alphabetical letter is the initial of the second word. The last verse is again supernumerary. There are mostly two lines to a letter. In Psalms 34:1-22 all the letters are represented except waw, Psalms 34:6 beginning not with it, as was to be expected, but with zayin. The last verse is again a supernumerary. Since here and in Psalms 25:22 the first word is a form of padhah it has been suggested that there may have been here a sort of acrostic on the writer's name Pedahel pedhah'el, but there is no evidence that a psalmist so named ever existed. There are two lines to a letter. In Psalms 37:1-40 all the letters are represented except `ayin which seems however from Septuagint to have been present in the earliest text. As a rule four lines are assigned to each letter. In Psalms 111:1-10 f are found two quite regular examples with a line to each letter. Psalms 119:1-176 offers another regular example, but with 16 lines to a letter, each alternate line beginning with its letter. Vs 1-8, for instance, each begin with 'aleph. In Psalms 145:1-21 are found all the letters but nun. As we find in Septuagint between Psalms 145:13 and Psalms 14:1-7, that is where the nun couplet ought to be:
"Faithful is the Lord in his words
And holy in his works,"
which may represent a Hebrew couplet beginning with nun, it would seem that a verse has dropped out of the Massoretic Text. Proverbs 31:10-31 constitutes a regular alphabetical poem with (except in Proverbs 31:15) two lines to a letter. Lamentations 1:1-22 is regular, with three lines to a letter Lamentations 2:1-22; Lamentations 3:1-66; Lamentations 4:1-22, are also regular with a curious exception. In each case pe precedes `ayin, a phenomenon which has not yet been explained. In Lamentations 2:1-22 there are three or four lines to a letter except in Lamentations 2:17, where there seem to be five. In Lamentations 3:1-66 also there are three lines to a letter and each line begins with that letter. In Lamentations 4:1-22 there are two lines to a letter except in Lamentations 4:22 where there are probably four lines. Lamentations 5:1-22 has twice as many lines as the letters of the alphabet but no alphabetical arrangement. In Nab 1:1-10 ff Delitzsch (following Frohnmeyer) in 1876, Bickell in 1880 and 1894, Gunkel in 1893 and 1895, G. B. Gray in 1898 (Expos, September) and others have pointed out possible traces of original alphabetical structure. In the Massoretic text, however, as generally arranged, it is not distinctly discernible. Sirach 51:13-30: As early as 1882 Bickell reconstructed this hymn on the basis of the Greek and Syriac versions as a Hebrew alphabetical poem. In 1897 Schechter (in the judgment of most scholars) discovered the original text in a collection of fragments from the Genizah of Cairo, and this proved the correctness of Bickell's idea and even the accuracy of some details of his reconstruction. The poem begins with 'aleph and has tav as the initial letter of the last line but one. In 51:21,22,24,25,26,27 the letters mem, nun, `ayin, pe, tsadhe, qoph and resh can be traced at the beginnings of lines in that order Samekh is absent (compare Schechter-Taylor, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, lxxvi-lxxxvii).
As this rapid survey will have shown, this form of acrostic as employed by Hebrew writers consisted in the use of letters of the alphabet as initials in their order, at regular intervals, the distance between two different letters ranging from one to sixteen lines. Once each letter is thus used three times, in another case eight times. The corruption of the text has in some cases led to considerable interference with the alphabetical arrangement, and textual criticism has endeavored to restore it with varying success.
These alphabetical poems have been unduly depreciated on account of their artificial structure and have also been regarded for the same reason as of comparatively late origin. This latter conclusion is premature with present evidence. The poems in Lam undoubtedly go back as far as the 6th century BC, and Assyrian testimony takes us back farther still for acrostic poems of some kind. Strictly alphabetical poems are of course out of the question in Assyrian because of the absence of an alphabet, but there are texts from the library of Ashur-bani-pal each verse-line in which begins with the same syllable, and others in which the initial syllables read together compose a word or sentence. Now these texts were written down in the 7th century BC, but may have been copied from far earlier Babylonian originals. There can be little doubt that oriental poets wrote acrostic at an early period, and therefore the use of some form of the acrostic is no clear indication of lateness of date. (For these Assyrian acrostics compare Weber, Die Literatur der Babylonier und Assyrer, 37.)
LITERATURE.
In addition to authorities already cited: Konig, Einl, 58, 66, 74, 76, 399, 404, 419, and Stilistik, etc., 357 ff, Budde, Geschichte der alt-hebraischen Litteratur, 30, 90, 241, 291; article "Acrostic" in HDB (larger and smaller) and Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, and Jewish Encyclopedia; commentaries on Ps, Nah, Prov and Lam; Driver, Parallel Psalter; King, Early Religious Poetry of the Hebrews, chapter iv.
William Taylor Smith
Acts of Pilate
Acts of Pilate - pi'-lat, pi'-lat.
See APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS.
Acts of Solomon
Acts of Solomon - "The book of the acts of Solomon" (1 Kings 11:41), probably a history based on the state documents kept by the official recorder. See 1 Kings 14:19, 29; 23, 31; 5, 14, 20, 27; 39, 45, etc.
Acts of the Apostles, 13-outline
Acts of the Apostles, 13-outline - XIII. Analysis. 1. The connection between the work of the apostles and that of Jesus (Acts 1:1-11).
2. The equipment of the early disciples for their task (Acts 1:12 through Acts 2:47).
(a) The disciples obeying Christ's parting command (Acts 1:12-26).
(b) The place of Judas filled (Acts 1:15-26).
(c) Miraculous manifestations of the presence of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-13).
(d) Peter's interpretation of the situation (Acts 2:14-36).
(e) The immediate effect of the sermon (Acts 2:37-41).
(f) The new spirit in the Christian community (Acts 2:42-47).
3. The development of the work in Jerusalem (Acts 3:1 through Acts 88:1a).
(a) An incident in the work of Peter and John with Peter's apologetic (Acts 3:1-26).
(b) Opposition of the Sadducees aroused by the preaching of the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 4:1-31).
(c) An internal difficulty, the problem of poverty (Acts 4:32 through Acts 5:11).
(d) Great progress of the cause in the city (Acts 5:12-16).
(e) Renewed hostility of the Sadducees and Gamaliel's retort to the Pharisees (Acts 5:17-42).
(f) A crisis in church life and the choice of the seven Hellenists (Acts 6:1-7).
(g) Stephen's spiritual interpretation of Christianity stirs the antagonism of the Pharisees and leads to his violent death (Acts 6:8 through Acts 88:1a).
4. The compulsory extension of the gospel to Judea, Samaria and the neighboring regions (Acts 8:1-40:Acts 1:11-26b-40).
(a) The great persecution, with Saul as leader (Acts 8:1-40:Acts 1:11-26b-Acts 4:1-37).
(b) Philip's work as a notable example of the work of the scattered disciples (Acts 8:5-40).
5. The conversion of Saul changes the whole situation for Christianity (Acts 9:1-31).
(a) Saul's mission to Damascus (Acts 9:1-3).
(b) Saul stopped in his hostile course and turns Christian himself (Acts 9:4-18).
(c) Saul becomes a powerful exponent of the gospel in Damascus and Jerusalem (Acts 9:19-30).
(d) The church has peace (Acts 9:31).
6. The door opened to the Gentiles, both Roman and Greek (Acts 9:32 through Acts 11:30).
(a) Peter's activity in this time of peace (Acts 9:32-43).
(b) The appeal from Cornelius in Caesarea and Peter's response (Acts 10:1-48).
(c) Peter's arraignment before the Pharisaic element in the church in Jerusalem (Acts 11:1-18).
(d) Greeks in Antioch are converted and Barnabas brings Saul to this work (Acts 11:19-26).
(e) The Greek Christians send relief to the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem (Acts 11:27-30).
7. Persecution from the civil government (Acts 12:1-25).
(a) Herod Agrippa I kills James and imprisons Peter (Acts 12:1-19).
(b) Herod pays the penalty for his crimes (Acts 12:20-23).
(c) Christianity prospers (Acts 12:24 f).
8. The Gentilepropaganda from Antioch under the leadership of Barnabas and Saul (Acts 13:1-52 through Acts 14:1-28).
(a) The specific call of the Holy Spirit to this work (Acts 13:1-3).
(b) The province of Cyprus and the leadership of Paul (Acts 13:4-12).
(c) The province of Pamphylia and the desertion of John Mark (Acts 13:13).
(d) The province of Galatia (Pisidia and Lycaonia) and the stronghold of the gospel upon the native population (Acts 13:14 through Acts 14:24).
(e) The return and report to Antioch (Acts 14:25-28).
9. The Gentilecampaign challenged by the Judaizers (Acts 15:1-35).
(a) They meet Paul and Barnabas at Antioch who decide to appeal to Jerusalem (Acts 15:1-3).
(b) The first public meeting in Jerusalem (Acts 15:4 f).
(c) The second and more extended discussion with the decision of the conference (Acts 15:6-29).
(d) The joyful reception (in Antioch) of the victory of Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15:30-35).
10. The second great campaign extending to Europe (Acts 15:36 through Acts 18:22).
(a) The breach between Paul and Barnabas over John Mark (Acts 15:36-39).
(b) From Antioch to Troas with the Macedonian Cry (Acts 15:40 through Acts 16:10).
(c) In Philippi in Macedonia the gospel gains a foothold in Europe, but meets opposition (Acts 16:11-40).
(d) Paul is driven also from Thessalonica and Berea (compare Philippi), cities of Macedonia also (Acts 17:1-15).
(e) Paul's experience in Athens (Acts 17:16-34).
(f) In Corinth Paul spends nearly two years and the cause of Christ wins legal recognition from the Roman governor (Acts 18:1-17).
(g) The return to Antioch by way of Ephesus, Caesarea and probably Jerusalem (Acts 18:18-22).
11. The third great tour, with Ephesus as headquarters (Acts 18:23 through Acts 20:3).
(a) Paul in Galatia and Phrygia again (Acts 18:23).
(b) Apollos in Ephesus before Paul comes (Acts 18:24-28).
(c) Paul's three years in Ephesus (Acts 19:1 through Acts 200:1a).
(d) The brief visit to Corinth because of the troubles there (Acts 20:1-38:Acts 1:11-26b-Acts 3:1-26).
12. Paul turns to Jerusalem again with plans for Rome (Acts 20:4 through Acts 21:16).
(a) His companions (Acts 20:4).
(b) Rejoined by Luke at Philippi (Acts 20:5 f).
(c) The story of Troas (Acts 20:7-12).
(d) Coasting along Asia (Acts 20:13-16).
(e) with the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts 20:17-38).
(f) From Miletus to Tyre (Acts 21:1-6).
(g) From Tyre to Caesarea (Acts 21:7-14).
(h) From Caesarea to Jerusalem (Acts 21:15 f).
13. The outcome in Jerusalem (Acts 21:15 through Acts 23:30).
(a) Paul's reception by the brethren (Acts 21:15-17).
(b) Their proposal of a plan by which Paul could undo the work of the Judaizers concerning him in Jerusalem (Acts 21:18-26).
(c) The uproar in the temple courts raised by the Jews from Asia as Paul was carrying out the plan to disarm the Judaizers (Acts 21:27-30).
(d) Paul's rescue by the Roman captain and Paul's defense to the Jewish mob (Acts 21:31 through Acts 22:23).
(e) Examination of the chief captain (Acts 22:24-29).
(f) Brought before the Sanhedrin (Acts 22:30 through Acts 23:10).
(g) Cheered by the Lord Jesus (Acts 23:11).
(h) Paul's escape from the plot of Jewish conspirators (Acts 23:12-30).
14. Paul a prisoner in Caesarea (Acts 23:31-26). (a) The flight to Caesarea and presentation to Felix (Acts 23:31-35).
(b) Paul's appearance before Felix (Acts 24). (c) Paul before Festus (Acts 25:1-12). (d) Paul, as a matter of curiosity and courtesy, brought before Herod Agrippa II (Acts 25:13 through Acts 26:32).
15. Paul going to Rome (Acts 27:1 through 28:15). (a) From Caesarea to Myra (Acts 27:1-5). (b) From Myra to Fair Havens (Acts 27:6-8). (c) From Fair Havens to Malta (Acts 27:9 through Acts 28:10).
(d) From Malta to Rome (Acts 28:11-15). 16. Paul in Rome at last (Acts 28:16-31). (a) His quarters (Acts 28:16). (b) His first interview with the Jews (Acts 28:17-22).
(c) His second interview with the Jews (Acts 28:23-28).
(d) Two years afterward still a prisoner, but with freedom to preach the gospel (Acts 28:30 f).
LITERATURE
Besides the works referred to above see Wendt's edition of Meyer's Kommentar (1899); Headlam inHDB ; Knowling on Acts in Expositor's Greek Testament (1900); Knowling, Witness of the Epistles (1892), Testimony of Paul to Christ (1905); Moffatt, Historical New Testament (1901).
Here is a selected list of important works:
1. Introduction: Bacon, Introduction to the New Testament (1900); Bennett and Adeney, Biblical Introduction (1899); Bleek, Einleitung in das New Testament (4 Aufl, 1900); S. Davidson, (3rd edition, 1894); C. R. Gregory, Canon and Text of the New Testament (1907), H. J. Holtzmann, Einleitung in das New Testament (3 Aufl, 1892), Jacquies, Histoire des livres du New Testament (1905-8); Julicher, Introduction to the New Testament (translation, 1904); Peaks, Critical Introduction to the New Testament (1909); Reuss, Canon of the Holy Scriptures (translation, 1886); Salmon, Hist Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament (7th edition, 1896), von Soden, The History of Early Christian Lit. (translation, 1906), B. Weiss, A Manual of Introduction to the New Testament (translation, 1889), Westcott, History of the Canon of the New Testament (1869), Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament (translation, 1909), Moffatt, Introduction to the Lit. of the New Testament (1911).
2. Text: See general works on textual criticism of the New Testament (Gregory, Kenyon, Nestle, Tischendorf, Scrivener, von Soden, B. Weiss, Westcott, etc.). Of special treatises note Blass, Philology of the Gospels (1898). Acta Apostolorum (1895); Bornemann, Acta Apostolorum (1848); Chase, Old Syriac Element in the Text of Codex Bezae (1893), Corssen, Der cyprianische Text der Acta Apostolorum (1892); Klostermann, Probleme im Apostel Texts (1883), Klostermann, Vindiciae Lucanae (1866); Nestle, Philologia (1896); J. Rendel Harris, Study Codex Bezae (1891).
3. Apostolic History: For literature on the life of Paul see Robertson, Epochs in the Life of Paul (1909), 321-27, and articlePAUL in this encyclopedia. Important general works are the following: Bartlet, The Apostolie Age (1899); Baumgarten, The Apostolic History (translation, 1854); Blunt, Studies in the Apostolic Age (1909); Burton, Records and Letters of the Apostolic Age (1895); Doellinger, The First Age of the Church (translation, 1867); Dobschutz, Christian Life in the Primitive Church (translation, 1904); Ewald, History of the Apostolic Times (translation, Vol VI in History of Israel); Farrar, Early Days of Christianity (1887); Fisher, The Beginnings of Christianity (1877); Gilbert, Christianity in the Apostolic Age (1908); Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (translation, 1904-5); Hausrath, Neut. Zeitgeschichte (Bd. 2, 1872); Heinrici, Das Urchristentum (1902); Holtzmann, Neut. Zeitgeschichte (1895); Hort, Judaistic Christianity (1898); Organization of the Early Christian Churches (1895); Lechler, The Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times (translation, 1886); Lightfoot, Dissertations on the Apostolic Age (1892); Lindsay, The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries (1902); McGiffert, A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age (1897); Neander, History of the Planting and Training of the Christian Church (1889); Pfleiderer, Christian origins (1906), Pressonse, The Early Years of Christianity (1870); Purves, Christianity in the Apostolic Age (1901), Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire (1893); Ritschl, Die Entstehung der altkath. Kirche (1857); Ropes, The Apostolic Age in the Light of Modern Criticism (1906); Weizsacker, The Apostolic Age of the Christian Church (translation, 1894-95); Pictures of the Apostolic Church (1910).
4. Special Treatises on the Acts: Belser, Beitrage zur Erklarung der Apostelgeschichte (1897); Benson, Addresses on the Acts of the Apostles (1901); Bethge, Die paulinischen Reden der Apostelgeschichte (1887); Blass, Acta Apostolorum secundum Formam quae videtur Romanam (1896); Chase, The Credibility of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles (1902); Clemen, Die Apostelgeschichte, im Lichte der neueren Forschungen (1905); Fiene, Eine vorkanonische Nebenlieferung des Lukas in Evangelium und Apostelgeschichte (1891); Harnack, Luke, the Physician (translation, 1907); The Acts of the Apostles (1909); Hilgenfeld, Acta Apostolorum Graece et Latine (1899); Jungst, Die Quellen der Apostelgeschichte (1895); Krenkel, Josephus und Lucas (1894); Luckok, Footprints of the Apostles as Traced by Luke in the Acts (1897); J. Lightfoot, Hebrew and Talmudical Exercitations on the Acts of the Apostles (1768); Paley, Horae Paulinae (Birks edition, 1850); Ramsay, Paul the Traveler (1896); Pauline and Other Studies (1906); Cities of Paul (1908), Luke the Physician, and Other Studies (1908); J. Smith, Voyage and Shipwreck of Paul (4th edition, 1880); Sorof, Die Entstehung der Apostelgeschichte (1890); Spitta, Die Apostelgeschichte, ihre Quellen und deren geschichtlicher Worth (1891); Stiffler, An Introduction to the Book of Acts (1892); Vogel, Zur Characteristik des Lukas nach Sprache und Stil (1897); J. Weiss, Ueber die Absicht und die literarischen Charakter der Apostelgeschichte (1897); Zeller, The Contents and Origin of the Acts of the Apostles (translation, 1875); Maurice Jones, Paul the Orator (1910).
5. Commentaries: There are the great standard works. like Bede, Bengel, Calvin, Chrysostom, Grotius. The chief modern commentaries are the following: Alexander (1857), Alloral (6th edition, 1868), Bartlet (1901), Blass (Acta Apostolorum, 1895), Ewald (Apostelgeschichte, 1871), Felten (Apostelgeschichte, 1892), Hackett (1882), Holtzmann (Hand-Commentar, 3 Aufl, 1901), Knabenbauer (Actus Apostol, 1899), Knowling (Expositor's Greek Text, 1900), Luthardt and Zoeckler (Apostelgeschichte, 2nd edition, 1894), McGarvey (1892), Meyer (translation by Gloag and Dickson, 1885), Meyer-Wendt (Apostelgeschichte, 1888). Noesgen (Apostelgeschichte, 1882), Olshausen (1832), Page (1897), Rackham (1901), Rendall, (1897), Stokes (1892), B. Weiss (Apostelgeschichte, 1892, 2nd edition).
A. T. Robertson
Acts of the Apostles, 1-7
Acts of the Apostles, 1-7 - a-pos'-ls:
I. TITLE
II. TEXT
III. UNITY OF THE BOOK
IV. THE AUTHOR
V. CANONICITY
VI. DATE
VII. SOURCES USED BY LUKE
VIII. THE SPEECHES IN THE ACTS
IX. RELATION OF ACTS TO THE EPISTLES
X. CHRONOLOGY OF ACTS
XI. HISTORICAL WORTH OF ACTS
XII. PURPOSE OF THE BOOK
XIII. ANALYSIS
LITERATURE
I. Title. It is possible, indeed probable, that the book originally had no title. The manuscripts give the title in several forms. Aleph (in the inscription) has merely "Acts" (Praxeis). So Tischendorf, while Origen, Didymus, Eusebius quote from "The Acts." But BD Aleph (in subscription) have "Acts of Apostles" or "The Acts of the Apostles" (Praxeis Apostolon). So Westcott and Hort, Nestle (compare Athanasius and Euthalius). Only slightly different is the title in 31,61, and many other cursives (Praxeis ton Apostolon, "Acts of the Apostles"). So Griesbach, Scholz. Several fathers (Clement of Alex, Origen, Dionysius of Alex, Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom) quote it as "The Acts of the Apostles" (Hai Praxeis ton Apostolon). Finally A2 EGH give it in the form "Acts of the Holy Apostles" (Praxeis ton Hagion Apostolon). The Memphitic version has "The Acts of the Holy Apostles." Clearly, then, there was no single title that commanded general acceptance.
II. Text. (1) The chief documents. These are the Primary Uncials (Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, Codex Bezae), Codex Laudianus (E) which is a bilingual Uncial confined to Acts, later Uncials like Codex Modena, Codex Regius, Codex the Priestly Code (P), the Cursives, the Vulgate, the Peshitta and the Harclean Syriac and quotations from the Fathers. We miss the Curetonian and Syriac Sinaiticus, and have only fragmentary testimony from the Old Latin.
(2) The modern editions of Acts present the types of text (Textus Receptus; the Revised Version (British and American); the critical text like that of Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in Greek or Nestle or Weiss or von Soden). These three types do not correspond with the four classes of text (Syrian, Western, Alexandrian, Neutral) outlined by Hort in his Introduction to the New Testament in Greek (1882). These four classes are broadly represented in the documents which give us Acts. But no modern editor of the Greek New Testament has given us the Western or the Alexandrian type of text, though Bornemann, as will presently be shown, argues for the originality of the Western type in Acts. But the Textus Receptus of the New Testament (Stephanus' 3rd edition in 1550) was the basis of the King James Version of 1611. This edition of the Greek New Testament made use of a very few manuscripts, and all of them late, except Codex Bezae, which was considered too eccentric to follow. Practically, then, the King James Version represents the Syriac type of text which may have been edited in Antioch in the 4th century. Various minor errors may have crept in since that date, but substantially the Syriac recension is the text of the King James Version today. Where this text stands alone, it is held by nearly all modern scholars to be in error, though Dean Burgon fought hard for the originality of the Syriac text (The Revision Revised, 1882). The text of Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in Greek is practically that of Codex Vaticanus, which is held to be the Neutral type of text. Nestle, von Soden, Weiss do not differ greatly from the text of Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in Greek, though von Soden and Weiss attack the problem on independent lines. The text of the Revised Version (British and American) is in a sense a compromise between that of the King James Version and the critical text, though coming pretty close to the critical text. Compare Whitney, The Reviser's Greek Text, 1892. For a present-day appreciation of this battle of the texts see J. Rendel Harris, Side Lights on the New Testament, 1908. For a detailed comparison between the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American) Acts see Rackham, The Acts of the Apostles, xxii.
(3) In Acts the Western type of text has its chief significance. It is the meet of the late Friedrich Blass, the famous classicist of Germany, to have shown that in Luke's writings (Gospel and Acts) the Western class (especially D) has its most marked characteristics. This fact is entirely independent of theory advanced by Blass which will be cussed directly. The chief modern revolt against theories of Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in Greek is the new interest felt in the value of the Western type of text. In particular Codex Bezae has come to the front in the Book of Acts. The feeble support that Codex Bezae has in its peculiar readings in Acts (due to absence of Curetonian Syriac and of the Old Latin) makes it difficult always to estimate the value of this document. But certainly these readings deserve careful consideration, and some of them may be correct, whatever view one holds of the Codex Bezae text. The chief variations are, as is usual with the Western text, additions and paraphrases. Some of the prejudice against Codex Bezae has disappeared as a result of modern discussion.
(4) Bornemann in 1848 argued that Codex Bezae in Acts represented the original text. But he has had very few followers.
(5) J. Rendel Harris (1891) sought to show that Codex Bezae (itself a bilingual MS) had been Latinized. He argued that already in 150 AD a bilingual manuscript existed. But this theory has not won a strong following.
(6) Chase (1893) sought to show that the peculiarities were due to translation from the Syriac
(7) Blass in 1895 created a sensation by arguing in his Commentary on Acts (Acta Apostolorum, 24 ff) that Luke had issued two editions of the Acts, as he later urged about the Gospel of Luke (Philology of the Gospels, 1898). In 1896 Blass published this Roman form of the text of Acts (Acta Apostolorum, secundum Formam quae videtur Romanam). Blass calls this first, rough, unabridged copy of Acts (beta) and considers that it was issued at Rome. The later edition, abridged and revised, he calls alpha. Curiously enough, in Acts 11:28, Codex Bezae has "when we had gathered together," making Luke present at Antioch. The idea of two editions is not wholly original with Blass. Leclerc, a Dutch philologist, had suggested the notion as early as the beginning of the 18th century. Bishop Lightfoot had also mentioned it (On a Fresh Revision of the New Testament, 29). But Blass worked the matter out and challenged the world of scholarship with his array of arguments. He has not carried his point with all, though he has won a respectable following. Zahn (Einl, II, 338 ff, 1899) had already been working toward the same view (348). He accepts in the main Blass' theory, as do Belser, Nestle, Salmon, Zockler. Blass acknowledges his debt to Corssen (Der cyprianische Text der Acta Apostolorum, 1892), but Corssen considers the alpha text as the earlier and the beta text as a later revision.
(8) Hilgenfeld (Acta Apostolorum, etc., 1899) accepts the notion of two edd, but denies identity of authorship.
(9) Schmiedel (Encyclopedia Biblica) vigorously and at much length attacks Blass' position, else "the conclusions reached in the foregoing sections would have to be withdrawn." He draws his conclusions and then demolishes Blass! He does find weak spots in Blass' armor as others have done (B. Weiss, Der Codex D in der Apostelgeschichte, 1897; Page, Class. Rev., 1897; Harnack, The Acts of the Apostles, 1909, 45). See also Knowling, The Acts of the Apostles, 1900, 47, for a sharp indictment of Blass' theory as being too simple and lacking verification.
(10) Harnack (The Acts of the Apostles, 48) doubts if Luke himself formally published the book. He thinks that he probably did not give the book a final revision, and that friends issued two or more editions He considers that the so-called beta recension has a "series of interpolations" and so is later than the alpha text.
(11) Ramsay (The Church in the Roman Empire, 150; Paul the Traveler, 27; The Expositor, 1895) considers the beta text to be a 2nd-century revision by a copyist who has preserved some very valuable 2nd-century testimony to the text.
(12) Headlam (HDB) does not believe that the problem has as yet been scientifically attacked, but that the solution lies in the textual license of scribes of the Western type (compare Hort, Introduction, 122 ff). But Headlam is still shy of "Western" readings. The fact is that the Western readings are sometimes correct as against the Neutral (compare Matthew 27:49). It is not necessary in Acts 11:20 to say that Hellenas is in Western authorities (AD, etc.) but is not a Western reading. It is at any rate too soon to say the final word about the text of Acts, though on the whole the alpha text still holds the field as against the beta text. The Syriac text is, of course, later, and out of court.
III. Unity of the Book. It is not easy to discuss this question, apart from that of authorship. But they are not exactly the same. One may be convinced of the unity of the book and yet not credit it to Luke, or, indeed, to anyone in the 1st century. Of course, if Luke is admitted to be the author of the book, the whole matter is simplified. His hand is in it all whatever sources he used. If Luke is not the author, there may still have been a competent historian at work, or the book may be a mere compilation. The first step, therefore, is to attack the problem of unity. Holtzmann (Einl, 383) holds Luke to be the author of the "we" sections only. Schmiedel denies that the Acts is written by a companion of Paul, though it is by the same author as the Gospel bearing Luke's name. In 1845 Schleiermacher credited the "we" sections to Timothy, not to Luke. For a good sketch of theories of "sources," see Knowling on Acts, 25 ff. Van Manen (1890) resolved the book into two parts, Acta Petri and Acta Pauli, combined by a redactor. Sorof (1890) ascribes one source to Luke, one to Timothy. Spitta also has two sources (a Pauline-Lukan and a Jewish-Christian) worked over by a redactor. Clemen (1905) has four sources (History of the Hellenists, History of Peter, History of Paul, and a Journey of Paul), all worked over by a series of editors. Hilgenfeld (1895) has three sources (Acts of Peter, Acts of the Seven, Acts of Paul). Jungst (1895) has a Pauline source and a Petrine source J. Weiss (1893) admits sources, but claims that the book has unity and a definite aim. B. Weiss (1902) conceives an early source for the first part of the book. Harnack (The Acts of the Apostles, 1909, 41 f) has small patience with all this blind criticism: "With them the book passes as a comparatively late patchwork compilation, in which the part taken by the editor is insignificant yet in all cases detrimental; the `we' sections are not the property of the author, but an extract from a source, or even a literary fiction." He charges the critics with "airy conceit and lofty contempt." Harnack has done a very great service in carefully sifting the matter in his Luke the Physician (1907). He gives detailed proof that the "we" sections are in the same style and by the same author as the rest of the book (26-120). Harnack does not claim originality in this line of argument: "It has been often stated and often proved that the `we' sections in vocabulary, in syntax, and in style are most intimately bound up with the whole work, and that this work itself including the Gospel), in spite of all diversity in its parts, is distinguished by a grand unity of literary form" (Luke the Physician, 26). He refers to the "splendid demonstration of this unity" by Klostermann (Vindiciae Lucanae, 1866), to B. Weiss, who, in his commentary (1893, 2 Aufl, 1902) "has done the best work in demonstrating the literary unity of the whole work," to "the admirable contributions" of Vogel (Zur Charakteristik des Lukas, etc., 2 Aufl, 1899) to the "yet more careful and minute investigations" of Hawkins (Horae Synopticae, 1899, 2nd edition, 1909), to the work of Hobart (The Medical Language of Luke, 1882), who "has proved only too much" (Luke the Physician, 175), but "the evidence is of overwhelming force" (198). Harnack only claims for himself that he has done the work in more detail and with more minute accuracy without claiming too much (27). But the conversion of Harnack to this view of Acts is extremely significant. It ought not to be necessary any more to refute the partition theories of the book, or to set forth in detail the proofs for the unity of the book. Perhaps the compilation theory of Acts is nowhere set forth more cogently than in McGiffert's The Apostolic Age (1897). See a powerful refutation of his argument by Ramsay in Pauline and Other Studies (1906, 302-21). "I think his clever argumentation is sophistical" (305). Harnack is fully aware that he has gone over to the rode of "Ramsay, Weiss and Zahn": "The results at which I have arrived not only approach very nearly to, but are often coincident with, the results of their research" (The Acts of the Apostles, 302). He is afraid that if these scholars failed to get the ear of critics "there is little prospect of claiming the attention of critics and compelling them to reconsider their position." But he has the advantage of coming to this conclusion from the other side. Moreover, if Harnack was won by the force of the facts, others may be. This brief sketch of Harnack's experience may take the place of detailed presentation of the arguments for the unity of the book. Harnack sets forth in great wealth of detail the characteristic idioms of the "we" sections side by side with parallels in other parts of Acts and the Gospel of Luke. The same man wrote the rest of Acts who wrote the "we" sections. This fact should now be acknowledged as proven. This does not mean that the writer, a personal witness in the "we" sections, had no sources for the other parts of Acts. This aspect of the matter will be considered a little later.
IV. The Author. Assuming the unity of the book, the argument runs as follows: The author was a companion of Paul. The "we" sections prove that (Acts 16:10-17; Acts 20:6-16; Acts 21:1-40; Acts 27:1-44; Acts 28:1-31). These sections have the fullness of detail and vivid description natural to an eye-witness. This companion was with Paul in the second missionary journey at Troas and at Philippi, joined Paul's party again at Philippi on the return to Jerusalem during the third tour, and probably remained with Paul till he went to Rome. Some of Paul's companions came to him at Rome: others are so described in the book as to preclude authorship. Aristarchus, Aquila and Priscilla, Erastus, Gaius, Mark, Silas, Timothy, Trophimus, Tychicus and others more or less insignificant from the point of view of connection with Paul (like Crescens, Demas, Justus, Linus, Pudens, Sopater, etc.) are easily eliminated. Curiously enough Luke and Titus are not mentioned in Acts by name at all. They are distinct persons as is stated in 2 Timothy 4:10 f. Titus was with Paul in Jerusalem at the conference (Galatians 2:1) and was his special envoy to Corinth during the time of trouble there. (2 Corinthians 2:12 f; 2 Corinthians 12:18.) He was later with Paul in Crete (Titus 1:5). But the absence of mention of Titus in Acts may be due to the fact that he was a brother of Luke (compare 2 Corinthians 8:18; 12:18). So A. Souter in DCG, article "Luke." If Luke is the author, it is easy to understand why his name does not appear. If Titus is his brother, the same explanation occurs. As between Luke and Titus the medical language of Acts argues for Luke. The writer was a physician. This fact Hobart (The Medical Language of Luke, 1882) has demonstrated. Compare Zahn, Einl, 2, 435 ff; Harnack's Luke the Physician, 177 ff. The arguments from the use of medical terms are not all of equal weight. But the style is colored at points by the language of a physician. The writer uses medical terms in a technical sense. This argument involves a minute comparison with the writings of physicians of the time. Thus in Acts 28:3 f kathapto, according to Hobart (288), is used in the sense of poisonous matter invading the body, as in Dioscorides, Animal. Ven. Proem. So Galen, De Typis 4 (VII, 467), uses it "of fever fixing on parts of the body." Compare Harnack, Luke the Physician, 177 f. Harnack agrees also that the terms of the diagnosis in Acts 28:8 "are medically exact and can be vouched for from medical literature" (ibid., 176 f). Hobart has overdone his argument and adduced many examples that are not pertinent, but a real residuum remains, according to Harnack. Then pimprasthai is a technical term for swelling. Let these serve as examples. The interest of the writer in matters of disease is also another indication, compare Luke 8:43. Now Luke was a companion of Paul during his later ministry and was a physician. (Colossians 4:14). Hence, he fulfils all the requirements of the case. The argument thus far is only probable, it is true; but there is to be added the undoubted fact that the same writer wrote both Gospel and Acts (Acts 1:1). The direct allusion to the Gospel is reinforced by identity of style and method in the two books. The external evidence is clear on the matter. Both Gospel and Acts are credited to Luke the physician. The Muratorian canon ascribes Acts to Luke. By the end of the 2nd century the authority of the Acts is as well established as that of the Gospel (Salmon, Introduction to the New Testament, 1885, 366). Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, all call Luke the author of the book. The argument is complete. It is still further strengthened by the fact that the point of view of the book is Pauline and by the absence of references to Paul's epistles. If one not Paul's companion had written Acts, he would certainly have made some use of them. Incidentally, also, this is an argument for the early date of the Acts. The proof that has won Harnack, the leader of the left in Germany, to the acknowledgment of the Lukan authorship of Acts ought to win all to this position.
V. Canonicity. The use of the Acts does not appear so early or so frequently as is true of the gospels and the Pauline epistles. The reason obvious. The epistles had a special field and the gospels appealed to all. Only gradually would Acts circulate. At first we find literary allusions without the name of book or author. But Holtzmann (Einl, 1892, 406) admits the use of Acts by Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Polycarp. The use of the Gospel according to Luke by Tatian and Marcion really revolves knowledge of the Acts. But in Irenaeus frequently (Adv. Haer., i. 23, 1, etc.) the Acts is credited to Luke and regarded as Scripture. The Canon of Muratori list it as Scripture. Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria attribute the book to Luke and treat it as Scripture. By the times of Eusebius the book is generally acknowledged as part of the canon. Certain of the heretical parties reject it (like the Ebionites, Marcionites, Manicheans). But by this time the Christians had come to lay stress on history (Gregory, Canon and Text of the New Testament, 1907, 184), and the place of Acts is now secure in the canon.
VI. Date. 1. Luke's relations to Josephus. The acceptance of the Lukan authorship settles the question of some of the dates presented by critics. Schmiedel places the date of Acts between 105 and 130 AD (Encyclopedia Biblica). He assumes as proven that Luke made use of the writings of Josephus. It has never been possible to take with much seriousness the claim that the Acts shows acquaintance with Josephus. See Keim, Geschichte Jesu,III , 1872, 134, and Krenkel, Josephus und Lucas, 1894, for the arguments in favor of that position. The words quoted to prove it are in the main untechnical words of common use. The only serious matter is the mention of Theudas and Judas the Galilean in Acts 5:36 f and Josephus (Ant., XX, v, 1 f). In Josephus the names occur some twenty lines apart and the resemblance is only slight indeed. The use of peitho in connection with Theudas and apostesai concerning Judas is all that requires notice. Surely, then, two common words for "persuade" and "revolt" are not enough to carry conviction of the writer's use of Josephus. The matter is more than offset by the differences in the two reports of the death of Herod Agrippa (Acts 12:19-23; Josephus, Ant, XVIII, vi, Acts 7:1-60, XIX, viii, Acts 2:1-47). The argument about Josephus may be definitely dismissed from the field. With that goes all the ground for a 2nd-century date. Other arguments have been adduced (see Holtzmann, Einl, 1892, 405) such as the use of Paul's epistles, acquaintance with Plutarch, Arrian and Pausanias, because of imitation in method of work (i.e. parallel lives of Peter and Paul, periods of history, etc.), correction of Gal in Acts (for instance, Galatians 1:17-24 and Acts 9:26-30; Galatians 2:1-10 and Acts 15:1-33). The parallel with Plutarch is fanciful, while the use of Panl's epistles is by no means clear, the absence of such use, indeed, being one of the characteristics of the book. The variation from Galatians is far better explained on the assumption that Luke had not seen the epistles.
2. 80 AD Is the Limit if the Book Is to Be Credited to Luke.
The majority of modern critics who accept the Lukan authorship place it between 70 and 80 AD. So Harnack, Lechler, Meyer, Ramsay, Sanday, Zahn. This opinion rests mainly on the idea that the Gospel according to Luke was written after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. It is claimed that Luke 21:20 shows that this tragedy had already occurred, as compared with Mark 13:14 and Matthew 24:15. But the mention of armies is very general, to be sure. Attention is called also to the absence of the warning in Luke. Harnack (The Acts of the Apostles, 291 f) admits that the arguments in favor of the date 70 to 80 are by no means conclusive. He writes "to warn critics against a too hasty closing of the chronological question." In his new book (Neue Untersuchungen zur Apostelgeschichte, etc., 1911, S. 81) Harnack definitely accepts the date before the destruction of Jerusalem. Lightfoot would give no date to Acts because of the uncertainty about the date of the Gospel.
3. Before 70 AD. This date is supported by Blass, Headlam, Maclean, Rackham, Salmon. Harhack, indeed, considers that "very weighty considerations" argue for the early date. He, as already stated, now takes his stand for the early date. It obviously the simplest way to understand Luke's close of the Acts to be due to the fact that Paul was still in prison. Harnack contends that the efforts to explain away this situation are not "quite satisfactory or very illuminating." He does not mention Paul's death because he was still alive. The dramatic purpose to bring Paul to Rome is artificial. The supposition of a third book from the use of proton in Acts 1:1 is quite gratuitous, since in the Koine, not to say the earlier Greek, "first was often used when only two were mentioned (compare "our first story" and "second story," "first wife" and "second wife"). The whole tone of the book is that which one would naturally have before 64 AD. After the burning of Rome and the destruction of Jerusalem the attitude maintained in the book toward Romans and Jews would have been very difficult unless the date was a long times afterward Harnack wishes "to help a doubt to its lust dues." That "doubt" of Harnack is destined to become the certainty of the future. (Since this sentence was written Harnack has settled his own doubt.) The book will, I think, be finally credited to the time 63 AD in Rome. The Gospel of Luke will then naturally belong to the period of Paul's imprisonment in Caesarea. The judgment of Moffatt (Historical New Testament, 1901, 416) that "it cannot be earlier than 80 AD is completely upset by the powerful attack of Harnack on his own previous position. See also Moffatt's Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament (1911) and Koch's Die Abfassungszeit des lukanischen Geschichtswerkes (1911).
VII. Sources Used by Luke. If we now assume that Luke is the author of the Acts, the question remains as to the character of the sources used by him. One is at liberty to appeal to Luke 1:1-4 for the general method of the author. He used both oral and written sources. In the Acts the matter is somewhat simplified by the fact that Luke was the companion of Paul for a considerable part of the narrative (the "we" sections, Acts 16:11-17; 20:5; 21:18; Acts 27:1-44 and Acts 28:1-31). It is more than probable that Luke was with Paul also during his last stay in Jerusalem and during the imprisonment at Caesarea. There is no reason to think that Luke suddenly left Paul in Jerusalem and returned to Caesarea only when he started to Rome (Acts 27:1). The absence of "we" is natural here, since it is not a narrative of travel, but a sketch of Paul's arrest and series of defenses. The very abundance of material here, as in Acts 20:1-38 and Acts 21:1-40, argues for the presence of Luke. But at any rate Luke has access to Paul himself for information concerning this period, as was true of the second, from Acts 13:1-52 to the end of the book. Luke was either present or he could have learned from Paul the facts used. He may have kept a travel diary, which was drawn upon when necessary. Luke could have taken notes of Paul's addresses in Jerusalem (Acts 22:1-30) and Caesarea (Acts 24:1-27 through Acts 26:1-32). From these, with Paul's help, he probably composed the account of Paul's conversion (Acts 9:1-30). If, as I think is true, the book was written during Paul's first Roman imprisonment, Luke had the benefit of appeal to Paul at all points. But, if so, he was thoroughly independent in style and assimilated his materials like a true historian. Paul (and also Philip for part of it) was a witness to the events about Stephen in Acts 6:8 through Acts 8:1 and a participant of the work in Antioch (Acts 11:19-30). Philip, the host of Paul's company (Acts 21:8) on the last journey to Jerusalem, was probably in Caesarea still during Paul's confinement there. He could have told Luke the events in Acts 6:1-7 and Acts 8:4-40. In Caesarea also the story of Peter's work may have been derived, possibly even from Cornelius himself (Acts 9:32 through Acts 11:18). Whether Luke ever went to Antioch or not we do not know (Codex Bezae has "we" in Acts 11:28), though he may have had access to the Antiochian traditions. But he did go to Jerusalem. However, the narrative in Acts 12:1-25 probably rests on the authority of John Mark (Acts 12:12, 25), in whose mother's house the disciples were assembled. Luke was apparently thrown with Mark in Rome (Colossians 4:10), if not before. For Acts 1:1-26 through 5 the matter does not at first seem so clear, but these chapters are not necessarily discredited on that account. It is remarkable, as ancient historians made so little mention of their sources, that we can connect Luke in the Acts with so many probable fountains of evidence. Barnabas (Acts 4:36) was able to tell much about the origin of the work in Jerusalem. So could Mnason. Philip also was one of the seven (Acts 6:5; 21:8). We do not know that Luke met Peter in Rome, though that is possible. But during the stay in Jerusalem and Caesarea (two years) Luke had abundant opportunity to learn the narrative of the great events told in Acts 1:1-26 through Acts 5:1-42. He perhaps used both oral and written sources for this section. One cannot, of course, prove by linguistic or historical arguments the precise nature of Luke's sources in Acts. Only in broad outlines the probable materials may be sketched.
Continued in ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, 8-12.
Acts of the Apostles, 8-12
Acts of the Apostles, 8-12 - Continued from ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, 1-7.
VIII. The Speeches in Acts. This matter is important enough to receive separate treatment. Are the numerous speeches reported in Acts free compositions of Luke made to order a la Thucydides? Are they verbatim reports from notes taken at the times and literally copied into the narrative? Are they substantial reports incorporated with more or less freedom with marks of Luke's own style? In the abstract either of these methods was possible. The example of Thucydides, Xenophon, Livy and Josephus shows that ancient historians did not scruple to invent speeches of which no report was available. There are not wanting those who accuse Luke of this very thing in Acts. The matter can only be settled by an appeal to the facts so far as they can be determined. It cannot be denied that to a certain extent the hand of Luke is apparent in the addresses reported by him in Acts. But this fact must not be pressed too far. It is not true that the addresses are all alike in style. It is possible to distinguish very clearly the speeches of Peter from those of Paul. Not merely is this true, but we are able to compare the addresses of both Paul and Peter with their epistles. It is not probable that Luke had seen these epistles, as will presently be shown. It is crediting remarkable literary skill to Luke to suppose that he made up "Petrine" speeches and "Pauline" speeches with such success that they harmonize beautifully with the teachings and general style of each of these apostles. The address of Stephen differs also sharply from those of Peter and Paul, though we are not able to compare this report with any original work by Stephen himself. Another thing is true also, particularly of Paul's sermons. They are wonderfully stated to time, place and audience. They all have a distract Pauline flavor, and yet a difference in local color that corresponds, to some extent, with the variations in the style of Paul's epistles. Professor Percy Gardner (The Speeches of Paul in Acts, in Cambridge Biblical Essays, 1909) recognizes these differences, but seeks to explain them on the ground of varying accuracy in the sources used by Luke, counting the speech at Miletus as the most historic of all. But he admits the use of sources by Luke for these addresses. The theory of pure invention by Luke is quite discredited by appeal to the facts. On the other hand, in view of the apparent presence of Luke's style to some extent in the speeches, it can hardly be claimed that he has made verbatim reports. Besides, the report of the addresses of Jesus in Luke's Gospel (as in the other gospels) shows the same freedom in giving the substance exact reproduction of the words that is found in Acts. Again, it seems clear that some, if not all, the reports in Acts are condensed, mere outlines in the case of some of Peter's addresses. The ancients knew how to make shorthand reports of such addresses. The oral tradition was probably active in preserving the early speeches of Peter and even of Stephen, though Paul himself heard Stephen. The speeches of Paul all show the marks of an eyewitness (Bethge, Die paulinischen Reden, etc., 174). For the speeches of Peter, Luke may have had documents, or he may have taken down the current oral tradition while he was in Jerusalem and Caesarea. Peter probably spoke in Greek on the day of Pentecost. His other addresses may have been in Aramaic or in Greek. But the oral tradition would certainly carry them in Greek, if also in Aramaic. Luke heard Paul speak at Miletus (Acts 20:1-38) and may have taken notes at the time. So also he almost certainly heard Paul's address on the steps of the Tower of Antonia (Acts 22:1-30) and that before Agrippa (Acts 26:1-32). There is no reason to think that he was absent when Paul made his defenses before Felix and Festus (Acts 24:1-27 through Acts 25:1-27) He was present on the ship when Paul spoke (Acts 27:1-44), and in Rome when he addressed the Jews (Acts 28:1-31) Luke was not on hand when Paul delivered his sermon at Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13:1-52), or at Lystra (Acts 14:1-28), or at Athens (Acts 17:1-34) But these discourses differ so greatly in theme and treatment, and are so essentially Pauline that it is natural to think that Paul himself gave Luke the notes which he used. The sermon at Antioch in Pisidia is probably given as a sample of Paul's missionary discourses. It contains the heart of Paul's gospel as it appears in his epistles. He accentuates the death and resurrection of Jesus, remission of sins through Christ, justification by faith. It is sometimes objected that at Athens the address shows a breadth of view and sympathy unknown to Paul, and that there is a curious Attic tone to the Greek style. The sermon does go as far as Paul can (compare 1 Corinthians 9:22) toward the standpoint of the Greeks (but compare Col and Eph). However, Paul does not sacrifice his principle of grace in Christ. He called the Athenians to repentance, preached the judgment for sin and announced the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man here taught did not mean that God yanked at sin and could save all men without repentance and forgiveness of sin. Chase (The Credibility of Acts) gives a collection of Paul's missionary addresses. The historical reality and value of the speeches in Acts may be said to be vindicated by modern scholarship. For a sympathetic and scholarly discussion of all of Paul's addresses see Jones, Paul the Orator (1910). The short speech of Tertullus (Acts 24:1-27) was made in public, as was the public statement of Festus in Acts 26:1-32. The letter of Claudias Lysias to Felix in Acts 23:1-35 was a public document. How Luke got hold of the conversation about Paul between Festus and Agrippa in Acts 26:1-32 is more difficult to conjecture.
IX. Relation of Acts to the Epistles. There is no real evidence that Luke made use of any of Paul's epistles. He was with Paul in Rome when Col was written (4:14), and may, indeed, have been Paul's amanuensis for this epistle (and for Eph and Philem). Some similarities to Luke's style have been pointed out. But Acts closes without any narrative of the events in Rome during the years there, so that these epistles exerted no influence on the composition of the book. As to the two preceding groups of Paul's epistles (1 and 2 Thess, 1 and 2 Cor, Gal, Roman) there is no proof that Luke saw any of them. The Epistle to the Romans was probably accessible to into while in Rome, but he does not seem to have used it. Luke evidently preferred to appeal to Paul directly for information rather than to his epistles. This is all simple enough if he wrote the book or made his data while Paul was alive. But if Acts was written very late, it would be strange for the author not to have made use of some of Paul's epistles. The book has, therefore, the great advantage of covering some of the same ground as that discussed in the earlier epistles, but from a thoroughly independent stand-point. The gaps in our knowledge from the one source are often supplied incidentally, but most satisfactorily, from the other. The coincidences between Acts and Paul's epistles have been well traced by Paley in his Horae Paulinae, still a book of much value. Knowling, in his Witness of the Epistles (1892), has made a more recent study of the same problem. But for the apparent conflict between Galatians 2:1-10 and Acts 15:1-41 the matter might be dropped at this point. It is argued by some that Acts, written long after Gal, brushes to one side the account of the Jerusalem conference given by Paul. It is held that Paul is correct in his personal record, and that Acts is therefore unhistorical Others save the credit of Acts by arguing that Paul is referring to an earlier private conference some years before the public discussion recorded in Acts 15:1-41. This is, of course, possible in itself, but it is by no means required by the variations between the two reports. The contention of Lightfoot has never been really overturned, that in Galatians 2:1-10 Paul gives the personal side of the conference, not a full report of the general meeting. What Paul is doing is to show the Galatians how he is on a par with the Jerusalem apostles, and how his authority and independence were acknowledged by them. This aspect of the matter came out in the private conference. Paul is not in Galatians 2:1-10 setting forth his victory over the Judaizers in behalf of Gentile freedom. But in Acts 15:1-41 it is precisely this struggle for Gentile freedom that is under discussion. Paul's relations with the Jerusalem apostles is not the point at all, though it in plain in Acts that they agree. In Galatians also Paul's victory for Gentile freedom comes out. Indeed, in Acts 15:1-41 it is twice mentioned that the apostles and elders were gathered together (Acts 15:4, 6), and twice we are told that Paul and Barnabas addressed them (Acts 15:4, 12). It is therefore natural to suppose that this private conference narrated by Paul in Galatians came in between Acts 2:5 and Acts 6:1-15. Luke may not, indeed, have seen the Epistle to the Galatians, and may not have heard from Paul the story of the private conference, though he knew of the two public meetings. If he did know of the private meeting, he thought it not pertinent to his narration. There is, of course, no contradiction between Paul's going up by revelation and by the appointment of the church in Antioch. In Galatians 2:1 we have the second (Galatians 1:18) visit to Jerusalem after his conversion mentioned by Paul, while that in Acts 15:1-41 is the third in Acts (Acts 9:28; 11:29 f; Acts 15:2). But there was no particular reason for Paul to mention the visit in Acts 11:30, which did not concern his relation to the apostles in Jerusalem. Indeed, only the "elders" are mentioned on this occasion. The same independence between Acts and Gal occurs in Galatians 1:17-24, and Acts 9:26-30. In Acts there is no allusion to the visit to Arabia, just as there is no mention of the private conference in Acts 15:1-41. So also in Acts 15:35-39 there is no mention of the sharp disagreement between Paul and Peter at Antioch recorded in Galatians 2:11 ff. Paul mentions it merely to prove his own authority and independence as an apostle. Luke had no occasion to record the incident, if he was acquainted with the matter. These instances illustrate well how, when the Acts and the epistles vary, they really supplement each other.
X. Chronology of Acts. Here we confront one of the most perplexing questions in New Testament criticism. In general, ancient writers were not so careful as modern writers are to give precise dates for historical events. Indeed, it was not easy to do so in view of the absence of a uniform method of reckoning times. Luke does, however, relate his narrative to outward events at various points. In his Gospel he had linked the birth of Jesus with the names of Augustus as emperor and of Quirinius as governor of Syria (Luke 2:1 f), and the entrance of John the Baptist upon his ministry with the names of the chief Roman and Jewish rulers of the time (Luke 3:1 f) So also in the Acts he does not leave us without various notes of times. He does not, indeed, give the date of the Ascension or of the Crucifixion, though he places the Ascension forty days after the Resurrection (Acts 1:3), and the great Day of Pentecost would then come ten days later, "not many days hence" (Acts 1:5) But the other events in the opening chapters of Acts have no clear chronological arrangement. The career of Stephen is merely located "in these days" (Acts 6:1). The beginning of the general persecution under Saul is located on the very day of Stephen's death (Acts 8:1), but the year is not even hinted at. The conversion of Saul comes probably in its chronological order in Acts 9:1-43, but the year again is not given. We have no hint as to the age of Saul at his conversion. So again the relation of Peter's work in Caesarea (10) to the preaching to the Greeks in Antioch (11) is not made clear, though probably in this order. It is only when we come to Acts 12:1-25 that we reach an event whose date is reasonably certain. This is the death of Herod Agrippa I in 44 AD. But even so, Luke does not correlate the life of Paul with that incident. Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveler, 49) places the persecution and death of James in 44, and the visit of Barnabas and Saul to Jerusalem in 46. About 44, then, we may consider that Saul came to Antioch from Tarsus. The "fourteen years" in Galatians 2:1 as already shown probably point to the visit in Acts 15:1-41 some years later. But Saul had been in Tarsus some years and had spent some three years in Arabia and Damascus after his conversion (Galatians 1:18). Beyond this it is not possible to go. We do not know the age of Saul in 44 AD or the year of his conversion. He was probably born not far from 1 AD. But if we locate Paul at Antioch with Barnabas in 44 AD, we can make some headway. Here Paul spent a year (Acts 11:26). The visit to Jerusalem in Acts 11:1-30, the first missionary tour in 13 and 14, the conference at Jerusalem in 15, the second missionary tour in 16 through 18, the third missionary tour and return to Jerusalem in 18 through 21, the arrest in Jerusalem and two years in Caesarea in 21 through 26, all come between 44 AD and the recall of Felix and the coming of Festus. It used to be taken for granted that Festus came in 60 AD. Wieseler figured it out so from Josephus and was followed by Lightfoot. But Eusebius, in his "Chronicle," placed that event in the second year of Nero. That would be 56, unless Eusebius has a special way of counting those years Mr. C. H Turner (art. "Chronology" in HDB) finds that Eusebius counts an emperor's regnal year from the September following. If so, the date could be moved forward to 57 (compare Rackham on Acts, lxvi). But Ramsay (chapter xiv, "Pauline Chronology," in Pauline and Other Studies) cuts the Gordian knot by showing an error in Eusebius due to his disregarding an interregnum with the reign of Mugs Ramsay here follows Erbes (Todestage Pauli und Pertri in this discovery and is able to fix upon 59 as the date of the coming of Festus. Probably 59 will have to answer as a compromise date. Between 44 AD and 59 AD, therefore, we place the bulk of Paul's active missionary work. Luke has divided this period into minor divisions with relative dates. Thus a year and six months are mentioned at Corinth (Acts 18:11), besides "yet many days" (Acts 18:18). In Ephesus we find mention of "three months" (Acts 19:8) and "two years" (Acts 19:10), the whole story summed up as "three years" (Acts 20:31) Then we have the "two years" of delay in Caesarea (Acts 24:27). We thus have about seven of these fifteen years itemized. Much of the remaining eight was spent in the journeys described by Luke. We are told also the times of year when the voyage to Rome was under way (Acts 27:9), the length of the voyage (Acts 27:27), the duration of the stay in Melita (Acts 28:11), and the times spent in Rome at the close of the book, "two whole years" (Acts 28:30). Thus it is possible to fix upon a relative schedule of dates, though not an absolute one. Harnack (The Acts of the Apostles, chapter i, "Chronological Data") has worked out a very careful scheme for the whole of Acts. Knowling has a good critical resume of the present state of our knowledge of the chronology of Acts in his Commentary, 38 ff, compare also Clemen, Die Chronologie der paulinischen Briefe (1893). It is clear, then, that a rational scheme for events of Paul's career so far as recorded in the Acts can be found. If 57 AD, for instance, should be taken as the year of Festus coming rather than 59 or 60 AD, the other dates back to 44 AD would, of course, be affected on a sliding scale. Back of 44 AD the dates are largely conjectural.
XI. Historical Worth of Acts. It was once fashionable to discredit Acts as a book of no real value as history. The Tubingen school regarded Acts as "a late controversial romance, the only historical value of which was to throw light on the thought of the period which produced it" (Chase, The Credibility of Acts, 9). There are not wanting a few writers who still regard Acts as a late eirenicon between the Peter and Paul parties, or as a party pamphlet in the interest of Paul. Somewhat fanciful parallels are found between Luke's treatment of both Peter and Paul "According to Holtzmann, the strongest argument for the critical position is the correspondence between the acts of Peter and the other apostles on the one rode and those of Paul on the other" (Headlam in HDB). But this matter seems rather far fetched. Peter is the leading figure in the early chapters, as Paul is in the latter half of the book, but the correspondences are not remarkably striking. There exists in some minds a prejudice against the book on the ground of the miracles recorded as genuine events by Luke. But Paul himself claimed to have wrought miracles (2 Corinthians 12:12). It is not scientific to rule a book out beforehand because it narrates miracles (Blass, Acta Apostolorum, 8). Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveler, 8) tells his experience in regard to the trustworthiness of Acts: "I began with a mind unfavorable to it, for the ingenuity and apparent completeness of the Tubingen theory had at one time quite convinced me." It was by actual verification of Acts in points where it could be tested by inscriptions, Paul's epistles, or current non-Christian writers, that "it was gradually borne in upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth." He concludes by "placing this great writer on the high pedestal that belongs to him" (10). McGiffert (The Apostolic Age) had been compelled by the geographical and historical evidence to abandon in part the older criticism. He also admitted that the Acts "is more trustworthy than previous critics allowed" (Ramsay, Luke the Physician, 5). Schmiedel (Encyclopedia Biblica) still argues that the writer of Acts is inaccurate because he was not in possession of full information. But on the whole Acts has had a triumphant vindicatioin in modern criticism. Julicher (Einl, 355) admits "a genuine core overgrown with legendary accretions" (Chase, Credibility, 9). The moral honesty of Luke, his fidelity to truth (Rackham on Acts, 46), is clearly shown in both his Gospel and the Acts. This, after all, is the chief trait in the true historian (Ramsay, Paul the Traveler, 4). Luke writes as a man of serious purpose and is the one New Testament writer who mentions his careful use of his materials (Luke 1:1-4). His attitude and spent are those of the historian. He reveals artistic skill, it is true, but not to the discredit of his record. He does not give a bare chronicle, but he writes a real history, an interpretation of the events recorded. He had adequate resources in the way of materials and endowment and has made conscientious and skillful use of his opportunity. It is not necessary here to give in detail all the points in which Luke has been vindicated (see Knowling on Acts, Ramsay's books and Harnack's Luke and Acts). The most obvious are the following: The use of "proconsul" instead of "propraetor" in Acts 13:7 is a striking instance. Curiously enough Cyprus was not a senatorial province very long. An inscription has been found in Cyprus "in the proconsulship of Paulus." The `first men' of Antioch in Pisidia is like the (13:50) "First Ten," a title which "was only given (as here) to a board of magistrates in Greek cities of the East" (MacLean in one-vol HDB). The "priest of Jupiter" at Lystra (14:13) is in accord with the known facts of the worship there. So we have Perga in Pamphylia (13:13), Antioch in Pisidia 13:14), Lystra and Derbe in Lycaonia (14:6), but not Iconium (14:1). In Philippi Luke notes that the magistrates are called strategoi or praetors (Acts 16:20), and are accompanied by lictors or rhabdouchoi (Acts 16:35). In Thessalonica the rulers are "politarchs" (Acts 17:6), a title found nowhere else, but now discovered on an inscription of Thessalonica. He rightly speaks of the Court of the Areopagus at Athens (Acts 17:19) and the proconsul in Achaia (Acts 18:12). Though Athens was a free city, the Court of the Areopagus at the times were the real rulers. Achaia was sometimes associated with Macedonia, though at this time it was a separate senatorial province. In Ephesus Luke knows of the "Asiarchs" (Acts 19:31), "the presidents of the `Common Council' of the province in cities where there was a temple of Rome and the Emperor; they superintended the worship of the Emperor" (Maclean). Note also the fact that Ephesus is "temple-keeper of the great Diana" (Acts 19:35). Then observe the town clerk (Acts 19:35), and the assembly (Acts 19:39). Note also the title of Felix, "governor" or procurator (Acts 24:1), Agrippa the king (Acts 25:13), Julius the centurion and the Augustan band (Acts 27:1). Acts 27:1-44 is a marvel of interest and accuracy for all who wish to know details of ancient seafaring. The matter has been worked over in a masterful way by James Smith, Voyage and Shipwreck of Paul. The title "First Man of the Island" (Acts 28:7) is now found on a coin of Melita. These are by no means all the matters of interest, but they will suffice. In most of the items given above Luke's veracity was once challenged, but now he has been triumphantly vindicated. The force of this vindication is best appreciated when one recalls the incidental nature of the items mentioned. They come from widely scattered districts and are just the points where in strange regions it is so easy to make slips. If space allowed, the matter could be set forth in more detail and with more justice to Luke's worth as a historian. It is true that in the earlier portions of the Acts we are not able to find so many geographical and historical corroborations. But the nature of the material did not call for the mention of so many places and persons. In the latter part Luke does not hesitate to record miraculous events also. His character as a historian is firmly established by the passages where outside contact has been found. We cannot refuse him a good name in the rest of the book, though the value of the sources used certainly cuts a figure. It has been urged that Luke breaks down as a historian in the double mention of Quirinius in Luke 2:2 and Acts 5:37. But Ramsay (Was Christ Born at Bethlehem?) has shown how the new knowledge of the census system of Augustus derived from the Egypt papyri is about to clear up this difficulty. Luke's general accuracy at least calls for suspense of judgment, and in the matter of Theudas and Judas the Galilean (Acts 5:1-42) Luke as compared with Josephus outclasses his rival. Harnack (The Acts of the Apostles, 203-29) gives in his usual painstaking way a number of examples of "inaccuracy and discrepancy" But the great bulk of them are merely examples of independence in narration (compare Acts 9:1-43 with Acts 22:1-30 and Acts 26:1-32, where we have three reports of Paul's conversion). Harnack did not, indeed, once place as high a value on Luke as a historian as he now does. It is all the more significant, therefore, to read the following in Harnack's The Acts of the Apostles (298 f): "The book has now been restored to the position of credit which is its rightful due. It is not only, taken as a whole, a genuinely historical work, but even in the majority of its details it is trustworthy 6 ..... Judged from almost every possible standpoint of historical criticism it is a solid, respectable, and in many respects an extraordinary work." That is, in my opinion, an understatement of the facts (see Ramsay), but it is a remarkable conclusion concerning the trustworthiness of Luke when one considers the distance that Harnack has come. At any rate the prejudice against Luke is rapidly disappearing. The judgment of the future is forecast by Ramsay, who ranks Luke as a historian of the first order.
XII. Purpose of the Book. A great deal of discussion has been given to Luke's aim in the Acts. Baur's theory was that this book was written to give a conciliatory view of the conflict between Peter and Paul, and that a minute parallelism exists in the Acts between these two heroes. This tendency theory once held the critical field, but it does not take into view all the facts, and fails to explain the book as a whole. Peter and Paul are the heroes of the book as they undoubtedly were the two chief personalities in apostolic history (compare Wendt, Apostelgeschichte, 17). There is some parallelism between the careers of the two men (compare the worship offered Peter at Caesarea in Acts 10:25, and that to Paul in Acts 14:11; see also the punishment of Ananias and Sapphira and that of Elymas). But Knowling (Acts, 16) well replies that curiously no use is made of the death of both Peter and Paul in Rome, possibly at the same time. If the Acts was written late, this matter would be open to the knowledge of the writer. There is in truth no real effort on Luke's part to paint Paul like Peter or Peter like Paul. The few similarities in incident are merely natural historical parallels. Others have seen in the Acts a strong purpose to conciliate Gentile(pagan) opinion in the fact that the Roman governors and military officers are so uniformly presented as favorable to Paul, while the Jews are represented as the real aggressors against Christianity (compare Josephus' attitude toward Rome). Here again the fact is beyond dispute. But the other explanation is the more natural, namely, that Luke brings out this aspect of the matter because it was the truth. Compare B. Weiss, Einl, 569. Luke does have an eye on the world relations of Christianity and rightly reflects Paul's ambition to win the Roman Empire to Christ (see Romans 15:1-33), but that is not to say that he has given the book a political bias or colored it so as to deprive it of its historical worth. It is probably true (compare Knowling, Acts, 15; J. Weiss, Ueber die Absicht und den literarischen Charakter der Apostelgeschichte) that Luke felt, as did Paul, that Jusaism realized its world destiny in Christianity, that Christianity was the true Judaism, the spiritual and real Israel. If Luke wrote Acts in Rome, while Paul's case was still before Nero, it is easy to understand the somewhat long and minute account of the arrest and trials of Paul in Jerusalem, Caesarea and Rome. The point would be that the legal aspect of Christianity before Roman laws was involved. Hitherto Christianity had found shelter as a sect of Judaism, and so was passed by Gallio in Corinth as a religio licita. If Paul was condemned as a Christian, the whole aspect of the matter would be altered. Christianity would at once become religio illicita. The last word in the Acts comments on the fact that Paul, though still a prisoner, was permitted to preach unhindered. The importance of this point is clearly seen as one pushes on to the Neronian persecution in 64. After that date Christianity stood apart from Judaism in the eye of Rome. I have already stated my belief that Luke closed the Acts when he did and as he did because the events with Paul had only gone thus far. Numerous scholars hold that Luke had in mind a third book (Acts 1:1), a possible though by no means necessary inference from "first treatise." It was a climax to carry the narrative on to Rome with Paul, but it is rather straining the point to find all this in Acts 1:8. Rome was not "the nethermost part of the earth," Spain more nearly being that. Nor did Paul take the gospel to Rome. Besides, to make the arrival of Paul in Rome the goal in the mind of Christ is too narrowing a purpose. The purpose to go to Rome did dominate Paul's mind for several years (Acts 19:21), but Paul cuts no figure in the early part of the book. And Paul wished to push on from Rome to Spain (Romans 15:24). It is probably true that Luke means to announce his purpose in Acts 1:1-8. One needs to keep in mind also Luke 1:1-4. There are various ways of writing history. Luke chooses the biographical method in Acts. Thus he conceives that he can best set forth the tremendous task of interpreting the first thirty years of the apostolic history. It is around persons (compare Harnack, The Acts of the Apostles, 117), two great figures (Peter and Paul), that the narrative is focused. Peter is most prominent in Acts 1:1-26 through Acts 12:1-25, Paul in Acts 13:1-52 through Acts 28:1-31. Still Paul's conversion is told in Acts 9:1-43 and Peter reappears in Acts 15:1-41. But these great personages do not stand alone. John the Apostle is certainly with Peter in the opening chapters. The other apostles are mentioned also by name (Acts 1:13) and a number of times in the first twelve chapters (and in Acts 15:1-41). But after Acts 15:1-41 they drop out of the narrative, for Luke follows the fortunes of Paul. The other chief secondary figures in Acts are Stephen, Philip, Barnabas, James, Apollos, all Hellenists save James (Harnack, 120). The minor characters are numerous (John, Mark, Silas, Timothy, Aquila and Priscilla, Aristarchus, etc.). In most cases Luke gives a distinct picture of these incidental personages. In particular he brings out sharply such men as Gallio, Claudius, Lysias, Felix, Festus, Herod, Agrippa I and II, Julius. Luke's conception of the apostolic history is that it is the work of Jesus still carried on by the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:1 f). Christ chose the apostles, commanded them to wait for power from on high, filled them with the Holy Spirit and then sent them on the mission of world conquest. In the Acts Luke records the waiting, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the planting of a powerful church in Jerusalem and the expansion of the gospel to Samaria and all over the Roman Empire. He addresses the book to Theophilus as his patron, a Gentile Christian plainly, as he had done with his gospel. The book is designed for the enlightenment of Christians generally concerning the historic origins of Christianity. It is in truth the first church history. It is in reality the Acts of the Holy Spirit as wrought through these men. It is an inspiring narration. Luke had no doubt whatever of the future of a gospel with such a history and with such heroes of faith as Peter and Paul.
Acts, Apocryphal
Acts, Apocryphal - a-pok'-ri-fal.
See APOCRYPHAL ACTS.
Acua
Acua - ak'-u-a.
See ACUD.
Acub
Acub - a'-kub (Codex Vaticanus, Akouph; Codex Alexandrinus, Akoum) = Bakbuk (Ezra 2:51; Nehemiah 7:53): The descendants of Acub (temple-servants) returned with Zerubbabel to Jerusalem (1 Esdras 5:31).
Acud
Acud - a'-kud (Akoud; the King James Version Acua) = AKKUB (Ezra 2:45) which see; omitted in Nehemiah 7:1-73: The descendants of Acud (temple-servants) returned with Zerubbabel to Jerusalem (1 Esdras 5:30).
Adadah
Adadah - a-da'-da (`adh`adhah): A city in the southern part of Judah (Joshua 15:22). The older copies of the Greek text have Arouel, but that is not a sufficient reason for identifying the name with the Aroer of 1 Samuel 30:28. Some scholars adopt the change of text, and identify the site with Ararah, about seven miles Southeast of Beer-sheba. Others identify it with Adadah, eight or nine miles Southeast of Arad.
Adadrimmon
Adadrimmon - a-dad-rim'-on: Shorter and less accurate name of a place in the Valley of Megiddo, which tradition connected with the death of King Josiah (Zechariah 12:11; 2 Chronicles 35:22).
See HADADRIMMON.
Adah
Adah - a'-da (`adhah, "adornment"):
(1) One of the two wives of Lamech the descendant of Cain (Genesis 4:19-20, 23). The narrative in Gen assigns to her two sons, Jabal the "father" of tent-dwelling people, and Jubal the "father" of all such as handle the harp and pipe." Josephus says that Lamech had 77 sons by Ada and Zillah (Ant., I, ii, 2).
(2) According to Genesis 36:2, 4, 10, 12, 16, the Hittite wife of Esau, daughter of Elon, and mother of Eliphaz. In this chapter Esau's other wives are Oholibamah, a Hivite, and Basemath the daughter of Ishmael. The names are differently given elsewhere (Genesis 26:34; 28:9). Basemath is said to be the daughter of Elon. The daughter of Ishmael is called Mahalath. In place of Oholibamah the Hivite we find Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite. Data are lacking for the solution of the problem.
Willis J. Beecher
Adaiah
Adaiah - a-da'-ya, a-di'-a (`adhayah, "Yahweh hath adorned"):
(1) Apparently the seventh of the nine sons of Shimei, who is apparently the same with Shema, who is the fifth of the sons of Elpaal, who is the second of the two sons of Shaharaim and Hushim (1 Chronicles 8:21). Shaharaim and his descendants are listed with the descendants of Benjamin, though his relations to Benjamin are not stated.
(2) A Levite; ancestor to David's singer Asaph, and a descendant of the fifth generation from Gershom (1 Chronicles 6:41).
(3) The father of Maaseiah, who was one of the captains of hundreds associated with Jehoiada the priest in making Joash king (2 Chronicles 23:1).
(4) A resident of Bozkath, and father of Jedidah the mother of King Josiah (2 Kings 22:1).
(5) A descendant of Judah through Perez. His great-great-grandson Maaseiah resided in Jerusalem after Nehemiah had rehabilitated the city (Nehemiah 11:5).
(6) One of the men of Israel, not a priest or Levite, but "of the sons of Bani," who promised Ezra that he would part with his foreign wife (Ezra 10:29).
(7) The same man or another, in a different group of the sons of Bani (Ezra 10:39).
(8) One of the priests of the latest Bible times, mentioned with a partial genealogy (Nehemiah 11:12; 1 Chronicles 9:12).
Willis J. Beecher
Adalia
Adalia - a-da-li'-a ('adhalya', probably a Persian name, meaning unknown): One of the ten sons of Haman who were put to death by the Jews (Esther 9:8).
Adam in the New Testament
Adam in the New Testament - (Adam): The name of Adam occurs nine times (in five different passages) in the New Testament, though several of these are purely incidental.
I. Gospels. In Luke 3:38 the ancestry of Jesus Christ is traced up to Adam, "Adam, the son of God," thereby testifying to the acceptance of the Old Testament genealogies of Gen. This is the only place in the Gospels in which Adam is actually named, though there is an allusion to him in Matthew 19:4-6 ( = Mark 10:6-8), referring to Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24.
II. Epistles. Adam is used by Paul as the founder of the race and the cause of the introduction of sin in order to point the comparison and contrast with Christ as the Head of the new race and the cause of righteousness.
1. Romans 5:12-21: The passage is the logical center of the epistle, the central point to which everything that precedes has converged, and out of which everything which follows will flow. The great ideas of Sin, Death, and Judgment are here shown to be involved in the connection of the human race with Adam. But over against this there is the blessed fact of union with Christ, and in this union righteousness and life. The double headship of mankind in Adam and Christ shows the significance of the work of redemption for the entire race. Mankind is ranged under two heads, Adam and Christ. There are two men, two acts and two results. In this teaching we have the spiritual and theological illustration of the great modern principle of solidarity. There is a solidarity of evil and a solidarity of good, but the latter far surpasses the former in the quality of the obedience of Christ as compared with Adam, and the facts of the work of Christ for justification and life. The section is thus no mere episode, or illustration, but that which gives organic life to the entire epistle. Although sin and death are ours in Adam righteousness and life are ours in Christ, and these latter two are infinitely the greater (Romans 5:11); whatever we have lost in Adam we have more than gained in Christ. As all the evils of the race sprang from one man, so all the blessings of redemption come from One Person, and there is such a connection between the Person and the race that all men can possess what the One has done. In Romans 5:12-19 Paul institutes a series of comparisons and contrasts between Adam and Christ; the two persons, the two works and the two consequences. The fullness of the apostle's meaning must be carefully observed. Not only does he teach that what we have derived from the first Adam is met by what is derived from Christ, but the transcendence of the work of the latter is regarded as almost infinite in extent. "The full meaning of Paul, however, is not grasped until we perceive that the benefits received from Christ, the Second Adam, are in inverse ratio to the disaster entailed by the first Adam. It is the surplus of this grace that in Paul's presentation is commonly overlooked" (Mabie, The Divine Reason of the Cross 116).
2. 1 Corinthians 15:22: The contrast instituted here between Adam and Christ refers to death and life, but great difficulty turns on the interpretation of the two "alls." "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." Dods (Expositor's Bible, 366) interprets it of Adam as the source of physical life that ends in death, and of Christ as the source of spiritual life that never dies. "All who are by physical derivation truly united to Adam incur the death, which by sinning he introduced into human experience; and similarly, all who by spiritual affinity are in Christ enjoy the new life which triumphs over death, and which he won." So also Edwards, who does not consider that there is any real unfairness in interpreting the former "all" as more extensive than the latter, "if we bear in mind that the conditions of entrance into the one class and the other are totally different. They are not stated here. But we have them in Romans 5:5-11, where the apostle seems as if he anticipated this objection to the analogy which he instituted between Adam and Christ. Both alike are heads of humanity, but they are unlike in this (as also in other things, Romans 5:15), that men are in Adam by nature, in Christ by faith" (Corinthians, 412). Godet considers that "perhaps this Interpretation is really that which corresponds best to the apostle's view," and he shows that zoopoieisthai, "to be made alive," is a more limited idea than egeiresthai, "to be raised," the limitation of the subject thus naturally proceeding from the special meaning of the verb itself. "The two pantes (all) embrace those only to whom each of the two powers extends." But Godet favors the view of Meyer and Ellicott that "all" is to be given the same interpretation in each clause, and that the reference is to all who are to rise, whether for life or condemnation, and that this is to be "in Christ": "Christ will quicken all; all will hear His voice and will come forth from the grave, but not all to the true `resurrection of life': see John 5:29" (Ellicott, Corinthians, 301) Godet argues that "there is nothing to prevent the word `quicken,' taken alone, from being used to denote restoration to the fullness of spiritual and bodily existence, with a view either to perdition or salvation" (Corinthians, 355). There are two serious difficulties to the latter interpretation: (1) The invariable meaning of "in Christ" is that of spiritual union; (2) the question whether the resurrection of the wicked really finds any place in the apostle's argument in the entire chapter.
3. 1 Corinthians 15:45: "The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit." The reference to Adam is from Genesis 2:7; the reference to Christ is due to the fact of what He had done and was doing in His manifestation as Divine Redeemer. Behind results the apostle proceeds to nature. Adam was simply a living being, Christ a life-giving Being. Thus Christ is called Adam as expressive of His Headship of a race. In this verse He is called the "last" Adam, while in 1 Corinthians 15:47 the "second." In the former verse the apostle deals not so much with Christ's relation to the first Adam as to the part He takes in relation to humanity, and His work on its behalf. When precisely Christ became life-giving is a matter of difference of opinion. Romans 1:4 associates power with the resurrection as the time when Christ was constituted Son of God for the purpose of bestowing the force of Divine grace. This gift of power was only made available for His church through the Ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. It is possible that the word "life-giving" may also include a reference to the resurrection of the body hereafter.
4. 1 Timothy 2:13, 14: Paul uses the creation of man and woman in his argument for the subordination of woman (Genesis 2:7-25). This is no mere Jewish reasoning, but an inspired statement of the typical meaning of the passage in Genesis. The argument is a very similar one to that in 1 Corinthians 11:8-9. When the apostle states that "Adam was not beguiled," we must apparently understand it as simply based on the text in Genesis to which he refers (Genesis 3:13), in which Eve, not Adam, says, "The serpent beguiled me." In Galatians 3:16 he reasons similarly from "seed" in the singular number, just as Hebrews 7:1-28 reasons from the silence of Genesis 14:1-24 in regard to the parentage of Melchizedek. Paul does not deny that Adam was deceived, but only that he was not directly deceived. His point is that Eve's facility in yielding warrants the rule as to women keeping silence.
5. Jude 1:14: "And Enoch, the seventh from Adam" (Genesis 5:1-32). Bigg says that the quotation which follows is a combination of passages from Enoch, though the allusion to Enoch himself is evidently based on the story in Gen.
III. Conclusions. As we review the use of "Adam" in the New Testament, we cannot fail to observe that Paul assumes that Adam was a historical personality, and that the record in Genesis was a record of facts, that sin and death were introduced into the world and affected the entire race as the penalty of the disobedience of one ancestor. Paul evidently takes it for granted that Adam knew and was responsible for what he was doing. Again, sin and death are regarded as connected, that death obtains its moral quality from sin. Paul clearly believed that physical dissolution was due to sin, and that there is some causal connection between Adam and the human race in regard to physical death. While the reference to death in Romans 5:1-21 as coming through sin, is primarily to physical death, yet physical death is the expression and sign of the deeper idea of spiritual death; and even though physical death was in the world before Adam it was only in connection with sin that its moral meaning and estimate became clear. Whether we are to interpret, "for that all sinned," as sinning when Adam sinned, or sinning as the result of an inherited tendency from Adam, the entire passage implies some causal connection between him and them. The need of redemption is thus made by the apostle to rest on facts. We are bound to Adam by birth, and it is open to us to become bound to Christ by faith. If we refuse to exchange our position in Adam for that which is offered to us in Christ we become answerable to God; this is the ground of moral freedom. The New Testament assumption of our common ancestry in Adam is true to the facts of evolutionary science, and the universality of sin predicated is equally true to the facts of human experience. Thus, redemption is grounded on the teaching of Scripture, and confirmed by the uncontradicted facts of history and experience. Whether, therefore, the references to Adam in the New Testament are purely incidental, or elaborated in theological discussion, everything is evidently based on the record in Gen.
W. H. Griffith Thomas
Adam in the Old Testament
Adam in the Old Testament - (Evolutionary Interpretation): (NOTE: It ought to be superfluous to say that the unfolding or development of the human personality here identified with evolution is something far higher, deeper, and other than anything that can be fathered upon Darwin or Herbert Spencer. Evolution (unfolding) is the great process or movement; natural selection and survival of the fittest name only guesses at some of its methods.) 'adham, "man," Genesis 1:26, or "a man," Genesis 2:5; ha-'adham, "the man"; mostly with the article as a generic term, and not used as the proper name of a patriarch until Genesis 5:3, after which the name first given to both man and woman (Genesis 5:2) is used of the man alone): The being in whom is embodied the Scripture idea of the first created man and ancestor of mankind. The account, which belongs mostly to the oldest stratum of the Genesis story (Jahwist) merits careful attention, because evolutionary science, history, and new theology have all quarreled with or rejected it on various grounds, without providing the smallest approach to a satisfactory substitute.
I. What the Writer Meant to Describe. It is important first of all, if we can, to get at what the author meant to describe, and how it is related, if at all, to literal and factual statement.
1. Derivation and Use of the Name: Scholars have exercised themselves much, but with little arrival at certainty, over the derivation of the name; a matter which, as it is concerned with one of the commonest words of the language, is of no great moment as compared with the writer's own understanding of it. The most plausible conjecture, perhaps, is that which connects it with the Assyrian adamu, "to make," or "produce," hence, "the produced one," "the creature." The author of Genesis 2:7 seems to associate it, rather by word-play than derivation, with ha-'adhamah, "the ground" or "soil," as the source from which man's body was taken (compare Genesis 3:19, 23) The name 'adhamah itself seems to be closely connected with the name Edom ('edhom, Genesis 25:30), meaning "red"; but whether from the redness of the soil, or the ruddiness of the man, or merely the incident recorded in Genesis 25:30, is uncertain. Without doubt the writer of (Genesis 2:1-25) 3 had in mind man's earthly origin, and understood the name accordingly.
2. Outline of the Genesis Narrative: The account of the creation is twice given, and from two very different points of view. In the first account, Genesis 1:26-31, man is represented as created on the sixth of the day along with the animals, a species Genesis in the animal world; but differing from them in bearing the image and likeness of God, in having dominion over all created things, and in having grains and fruits for food, while they have herbs. The writer's object in all this seems to be as much to identify man with the animal creation as to differentiate him from it. In the second account, Genesis 2:4 through Genesis 3:24, man's identity with the animals ignored or at least minimized (compare Genesis 2:20), while the object is to determine his status in a spiritual individualized realm wherein he has the companionship of God. Yahweh God "forms" or "shapes" him out of the dust of the ground, breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and with such special distinction he becomes, like other created things, a "living soul" (nephesh chayyah; compare Genesis 2:7 with Genesis 1:30). He is placed in a garden situated somewhere among the rivers of Babylonia, his primitive occupation being to dress and keep it. In the midst of the garden are two mysterious trees, the tree of life, whose fruit seems to have the potency of conferring immortality (compare Genesis 3:22), and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, whose fruit is not to be eaten under penalty of death. Meanwhile, as in naming the animals the man finds no real companion, Yahweh God "builds" one of the man's ribs into a woman, and the man recognizes her spiritual unity with him, naming her accordingly. The story goes on to relate, without note of time, how the serpent, the subtlest of beasts, urged on the woman the desirable qualities of the fruit of the forbidden tree, intimating that God had made the prohibition from envy, and roundly denying that death would be the consequence of eating. Accordingly the woman took and ate, and gave to her husband, who also ate; and the immediate consequence was a sense of shame, which caused them to cover their nakedness with girdles of fig leaves, and a sense of guilt (not differentiated by Adam from shame, Genesis 3:10), which made the pair reluctant to meet Yahweh God. He obtains the confession of their disobedience, however; and passes prophetic sentence: on the serpent, of perpetual antipathy between its species and the human; on the woman, of sorrows and pains and subservience to the man; and on the man, of hardship and severe labors, until he returns to the dust from which he was taken. As the pair have chosen to eat of the tree of knowledge, lest now they should eat of the tree of life they are expelled from the garden, and the gate is guarded by flaming sword and Cherubim.
3. History or Exposition?: It is impossible to read this story with the entire detachment that we accord to an ancient myth, or even to a time- and space-conditioned historical tale. It continually suggests intimate relations with the permanent truths of human nature, as if there were a fiber in it truer than fact. And this provokes the inquiry whether the author himself intended the account of the Edenic state and the Fall to be taken as literal history or as exposition. He uniformly makes the name generic by the article (the adam or man), the only exceptions, which are not real exceptions in meaning, being Genesis 1:26 and Genesis 2:5, already noted. It is not until Genesis 5:3, where the proper name Adam is as it were officially given, that such history as is conditioned by chronology and genealogy begins. What comes before this, except the somewhat vague location of the Eden region, Genesis 2:10-14, reads rather like a description of the primordial manhood nature not in philosophical but in narrative language . It is not fable, it is not a worked-over myth, it is not a didactic parable; it is (to speak technically) exposition by narration. By a descriptive story it traces the elemental movement of manhood in its first spiritual impact on this earthly life. In other words, instead of being concerned to relate a factual series of events from the remote past, the writer's penetrative intuition goes downward and inward to those spiritual movements of being which are germinal in all manhood. It is a spiritual analysis of man's intrinsic nature, and as such must be spiritually discerned. An analogous manner of exposition may be seen in the account of our Lord's temptation in the wilderness, Matthew 4:1-11, which account, if authentic, must have come ultimately from our Lord Himself.
II. How the Story Looks Today. Scarcely any other Scripture story has so suffered from the changes wrought by modern thinking as has this story of Adam. On the one hand it is felt that to refer the fall and inherited guilt of mankind to this experience of Adam as a cause is to impose too great a burden, dogmatic and historic, on this primitive story. Yet on the other hand the story, including this implication of the primal fall, refuses to be dismissed as an outworn or fantastic myth. It lays hold so vitally on the roots of human nature that our only course is not to reject it but to re-read it with the best light our age affords. And whether best or not, the evolutionary light in which all modern thought is colored cannot be ignored.
1. In the Light of Evolution: The divergent assumptions of the traditional and the evolutionary view may be roughly stated thus: of the traditional, that in consequence of this Eden lapse man is a ruined nature, needing redemption and reinstatement, and that therefore the subsequent spiritual dealing with him must be essentially pathological and remedial; of the evolutionary, that by the very terms of his creation, which the lapse from obedience did not annul, man is spiritually a child needing growth and education, and that therefore the subsequent dealing with him must foster the development within him of a nature essentially normal and true. It is evident that these two views, thus stated, merely regard two lines of potency in one nature. Without rejecting the traditional, or stopping to inquire how it and the evolutionary may coexist, we may here consider how the story before us responds to the evolutionary view. Only--it must be premised--the evolution whose beginning it describes is not the evolution of the human species; we can leave natural science and history to take care of that; but, beginning where this leaves off, the evolution of the individual, from the first forth-putting of individual initiative and choice toward the far-off adult and complete personality. This, which in view of its culmination we may call the evolution of personality, is evolution distinctively spiritual, that stage and grade of upward moving being which succeeds to the material and psychical (compare 1 Corinthians 15:45-46). On the material stage of evolution, which the human species shares with the beast and the plant, Scripture is silent. Nor is it greatly concerned with the psychical, or cultural development of the human species, except to reveal in a divinely ordered history and literature its essential inadequacy to the highest manhood potencies. Rather its field is the evolution of the spirit in which alone the highest personal values are realized. In the delimitation of this field it has a consistent origin, course and culmination of its own, as it traces the line of spiritual uprising and growth from the first Adam, who as a "living soul" was subject to the determinism of the species, to the last Adam, who as a "life-giving spirit" is identified with the supreme Personality in whom Divine and human met and blended. Of this tremendous evolution the story of Adam, with a clearness which the quaint narrative style of exposition does not impair, reveals the primal and directive factors.
2. The Garden Habitat: Just as the habitat and the nature of created things answer to each other, so the environment in which man is placed when he comes from his Creator's hand connotes the kind of life he is fitted to live. He is placed not in wild and refractory Nature but in a garden watered and planted with a new to his receiving care and nurture from above. Nature is kindly and responsive, furnishing, fruits ready to his hand, and requiring only that he "dress and keep" the garden. Of all the trees he may freely eat, including the tree of life; save only the
most centrally located of all, the tree of "knowledge of good and evil" The being fitted to this habitat is a man adult in stature and intelligence, but still like a child; not yet individualized to determinate character, not yet exerting a will of his own apart from the will of his Creator; in other words, as spiritually considered, not yet detached from the spirit of his personal Source. All this reads like the description of a life essentially negative, or rather neutral, with free communication both downward and upward, but neither that of a domesticated animal nor of a captive god; a being balanced, as it were, between the earthly and the Divine, but not yet aware of the possession of that individual will and choice which alone can give spiritual significance to a committal to either.
3. The Organic Factor: In the first story of man's creation, Genesis 1:26-31, describing his creation as a species, the distinction of male and female is explicitly included (Genesis 1:27). In the second story (Genesis 2:1-25 through Genesis 3:1-24), wherein man is contemplated rather as an individual, the description of his nature begins before any distinction of sex exists. If the writer meant this latter to portray a condition of man in time or in natural fact, there is thus a discrepancy in accounts. If we regard it, however, as giving a factor in spiritual evolution, it not only becomes full of meaning but lays hold profoundly on the ultimate teleology of creation. The naive story relates that the woman was "built" out of the already-shaped material of the man's body, in order to supply a fellowship which the animals could not; a help "answering to" into (keneghdo; compare Genesis 2:18 margin). Then it makes the man recognize this conjugal relation, not at all with reference to sexual passion or the propagation of species but as furnishing man occasion, so to say, for loving and being loved, and making this capacity essential to the integrity of his nature. The value of this for the ultimate creative purpose and revelation is as marvelous as it is profound, it is the organic factor in realizing the far-reaching design of Him who is evolving a being bearing His image and deriving from Him the breath of life. That God is Spirit (John 4:24), that God is love (1 John 4:8, 16) and love creation's final law," may as an idea be later revelation; but meanwhile from the beginning, in the commonest relation of life, a pulsation of mutual love is implanted, by making man a dual nature, wherein love, which is the antithesis of self-seeking, has the equal and companionable object necessary to its existence. Thus, in the conjugal relation the potency of the highest and broadest spiritual value is made intrinsic. In all the dubious course of his subsequent evolution, this capacity of love, though itself subject to the corruptio optimi pessima, is like a redeeming element at the heart alike of the individual and of society.
4. The Invasion of Subtlety: Even in this neutral garden existence it is noteworthy that the man's nature evinces its superiority to the animal in the absence of determinism he is not enslaved to an instinct of blind conformity to an external will In other words, he can cooperate intelligently in his own spiritual evolution. He has the power of choice, ministered by the stimulus of an unmotivated prohibition. He can abstain and live, or eat and die (Genesis 2:16-17). No reasons are given, no train of spiritual consequences, to one whose spirit is not yet awake; in this pre-spiritual stage rather the beginnings of law and prescription must be arbitrary. Yet even in so rudimentary a relation we are aware of the essential contrast between animal and spiritual evolution, in that the latter is not a blind and instinctive imposition from without, but a free course submitted to man's intelligence and cooperation. And it is a supremely significant feature of the narrative to make the first self-interested impulse come by the way of subtlety. "The serpent," the writer premises, "was more subtle than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made." It points to a trait which he puts on the border-line between the species and the individual, the disposition, not indeed to rebel against a law of being, but to submit it to refinement and accommodation or perhaps from sheer curiosity to try conclusions with it. The suggestion came first from the lower creation, but not from what is animal in it; and it was eagerly responded to by the woman, the finer and more spiritually awake of the pair. Not to press this too far, it is significant that the first impulse toward individual initiative rises through the free play of intellect and reason. It seems to promise a subtler way of being "like God." To differentiate more minutely the respective parts of man and wife in the affair, which are portrayed in the light of sex distinction, would be beyond our present scope.
See EVE.
5. The Fateful Venture: Two trees "in the midst of the garden" (Genesis 2:9) are mentioned at the outset; but the tree of life, the permitted one, seems no more to have been thought of until it was no longer accessible (Genesis 3:22); indeed, when the woman speaks to the serpent of "the tree which is in the midst of the garden" (Genesis 3:3) she has only one tree in mind, and that the prohibited one. The other, as it was counted in with their daily fare and opportunity, seems to have been put by them with those privileges of life which are ignored or postponed, besides, the life it symbolized was the perpetuation of the garden-life they were living, such life as man would live before his spirit was awake to the alternatives of living--a life innocent and blissful, but without the stimulus of spiritual reaction. And it was just this latter that the alternative of the two trees afforded; a reaction fateful for good or evil, needing only the impulse that should set the human spirit in motion. Consider the case. If manhood were ever to rise from a state of childhood, wherein everything was done and prescribed for him, into a life of free choice and self-moved wisdom, it is hard to see how this could have been brought about except by something involving inhibition and prohibition; something that he could not do without incurring a risk. This is what the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis 2:17) means. The tree by its very name was alike a test and a lure. In a sense we may say the temptation began with God; but it was not a temptation to evil. Symbolized in the two trees, but actual in the opportunity of spiritual committal, two ways of life stood open before him. On the one hand, it was open to him to fortify his spent in obedience and against the lure of perilous knowledge, thus deepening and seasoning his negative innocence into positive holiness. That such a course was feasible was shown centuries later in the Divine Son of Man, who in perfect loyalty of the child yet in perfect wisdom of adultness fulfilled the primal sinless ideal of the first Adam. On the other hand there was the lure of the forbidden knowledge, to which the serpent gave the false glamor of godlikeness, and which could be had by detaching his individual will from that of God, and incurring the experience of self-seeking, and taking the risk. It was the latter that was chosen, this however not in the spirit of rebellion or temptation, but in the desire for a good beyond what the childlike limitations of Eden afforded (Genesis 3:6). This then was the first motivated uprising of the spirit of manhood, taking the initiative and acting for itself. So far forth, as the self-assertion of the individual, it was as truly a stage of spiritual evolution as if the man had maintained obedience; but there was in it the rupture of his spirit's union with its personal Source; and the hapless committal to self, which is rightly called a Fall. So strangely mingled were the spiritual elements in this primal manhood initiative.
See FALL, THE.
6. The Fitted Sequel: The Scripture does not say, or even imply, that by this forth-putting of initiative the man was committed to a life of sin and depravity. This was the idea of a later time. By the nature of the case, however, he was committed to the fallibility and lack of wisdom of his own untried nature; in other words, to the perils of self-reliance. Naturally, too, the gulf of detachment from his spiritual Support would tend to widen as he trusted himself more exclusively. It lay with him and his species to perfect the individual personality in the freedom which he had chosen. And in this the possibilities both upward toward godlikeness and downward toward the abysms of self were immensely enlarged. Life must henceforth be lived on a broader and profounder scale. But to this end Eden with its tender garden nurture can no longer be its habitat, nor can man's existence be fitly symbolized by a tree from which he has only to take and subsist indefinitely (Genesis 3:22). It must encounter hardship and sweat and toil; it must labor to subdue a reluctant soil to its service (Genesis 3:17-19); it must return at last to the dust from which man's body was formed (Genesis 3:19). Yet there is vouchsafed a dim and distant presage of ultimate victory over the serpent-power, which henceforth is to be man's deadly enemy (Genesis 3:15). At this point of the exposition it is that the inchoate manhood is transplanted from the garden to the unsubdued world, to work out its evolution under the conditions of the human species. The pair becomes the family, with its family interests and cares; the family becomes the unit of social and organized life; the members receive individual names (Genesis 3:20; 5:2); and chronologically measured history begins.
III. How Adam Is Recognized in the Old Testament. After the story of Adam is given as far as the birth of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:1-2) and Seth (Genesis 4:25), the "book of the generations of Adam" begins at Genesis 5:1, and five verses are taken up with a statistical outline of his life, his offspring, and his 930 years of earthly existence.
1. In the Old Testament Canonical Books: Here at Genesis 5:5, in the canonical books of the Old Testament almost all allusion to him ceases, and nothing whatever is made of his fateful relation to the sin and guilt of the race. (See ADAM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.) This latter idea seems to have come to consciousness only when men's sense of sin and a broken law was more ingrained than it seems to have been in canonical times In the case of the few allusions that, occur, moreover, the fact that the name "Adam" is identical with the word for "man" makes the reference more or less uncertain; one does not know whether the patriarch or the race is meant. In the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32:1-52), in the clause Deuteronomy 32:8, "when he separated the children of men" (or "Adam"), the reference, which is to the distribution of races as given in Genesis 10:1-32, may or may not have Adam in mind. In like manner Zophar's words (Job 20:4), "Knowest thou not this of old time, since man (or Adam) was placed upon earth?" may or may not be recognition by name of the first created man Job's words (Job 31:33), "if like Adam I have covered my transgressions," sound rather more definite as an allusion to Adam's hiding himself after having taken the fruit. When Isaiah says (Isaiah 43:27), "Thy first father sinned," It is uncertain whom he means; for in Isaiah 51:2 he says, "Look unto Abraham your father," and Ezekiel has told his people (Ezekiel 16:3), "The Amorite was thy father, and thy mother was a Hittite." The historical consciousness of the prophets seems to have been confined to the history of the Israelite race.
2. In the Apocrypha: The references in the Apocryphal books (Sirach, Tobit, 2 Esdras) deal with Adam's origin, his lordship over creation, and in the latest written book with the legacy of sin and misery that the race inherits from him. The passages in Sirach (132 BC) where he is mentioned are 33:10; 40:1, and 49:16. Of these the most striking, 40:1, "Great travail is created for every man, and a heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam," is hardly to be construed as a reference to our heritage of his sin. In Tobit (2nd century BC) he is mentioned once (8:6), "Thou madest Adam, and gavest him Eve." 2 Esdras, written supposedly some time after 70 AD, is of a somber and desponding tone throughout; and its references to Adam (2 Esdras 3:5, 10, 21, 26, 2 Esdras 4:30; 6:54; 2 Esdras 7:11, 46, 48) are almost all in lament over the evil he has implanted in the race of men by his transgression. The first reference (3:5) is rather remarkable for its theory of Adam's nature: "And (thou) commandedst the dust, and it gave thee Adam, a body without a soul, yet it was the workmanship of thine hands," etc. His indictment of Adam culminates (7:48) in the apostrophe: "O thou Adam, what hast thou done? for though it was thou that sinned, the evil is not fallen on thee alone, but upon all of us that come of thee."
John Franklin Genung
(EDITORIAL NOTE.--The promoters of the Encyclopedia are not to be understood as endorsing all the views set forth in Dr. Genung's article. It was thought right, however, that a full and adequate presentation of so suggestive an interpretation should be given.)
Adam in the Old Testament and the Apocrypha
Adam in the Old Testament and the Apocrypha - ad'-am, ('adham; Septuagint Adam).
1. Usage and Etymology: The Hebrew word occurs some 560 times in the Old Testament with the meaning "man," "mankind." Outside Genesis 1:1-31 through 5 the only case where it is unquestionably a proper name is 1 Chronicles 1:1. Ambiguous are Deuteronomy 32:8, the King James Version "sons of Adam," the Revised Version (British and American) "children of men"; Job 31:33 the King James Version "as" the Revised Version (British and American) "like Adam," but margin "after the manner of men"; Hosea 6:7 the King James Version "like men," the Revised Version (British and American) "like Adam," and vice versa in the margin. In Genesis 1:1-31 the word occurs only twice, Genesis 1:26-27. In Genesis 2:1-25 through 4 it is found Genesis 26:1-35 times, and in Genesis 5:1, 3-4, 5. In the last four cases and in Genesis 4:25 it is obviously intended as a proper name; but the versions show considerable uncertainty as to the rendering in the other cases. Most modern interpreters would restore a vowel point to the Hebrew text in Genesis 2:20; 17, 21, thus introducing the definite article, and read uniformly "the man" up to Genesis 4:25, where the absence of the article may be taken as an indication that "the man" of the previous narrative is to be identified with "Adam," the head of the genealogy found in Genesis 5:1 ff. Several conjectures have been put forth as to the root-meaning of the Hebrew word: (1) creature; (2) ruddy one; (3) earthborn. Less probable are (4) pleasant--to sight--and (5) social gregarious.
2. Adam in the Narrative of Genesis: Many argue from the context that the language of Genesis 1:26-27 is general, that it is the creation of the human species, not of any particular individual or individuals, that is in the described. But (1) the context does not even descend to a species, but arranges created things according to the most general possible classification: light and darkness; firmament and waters; land and seas; plants; sun, moon, stars; swimming and flying creatures; land animals. No possible parallel to this classification remains in the case of mankind. (2) In the narrative of Genesis 1:1-31 the recurrence of identical expressions is almost rigidly uniform, but in the case of man the unique statement occurs (verse 27), "Male and female created he them." Although Dillmann is here in the minority among interpreters, it would be difficult to show that he is wrong in interpreting this as referring to one male and one female, the first pair. In this case we have a point of contact and of agreement with the narrative of chapter 2. Man, created in God's image, is given dominion over every animal, is allowed every herb and fruit tree for his sustenance, and is bidden multiply and fill the earth. In Genesis 2:4 through Genesis 5:5 the first man is made of the dust, becomes a living creature by the breath of God, is placed in the garden of Eden to till it, gives names to the animals, receives as his counterpart and helper a woman formed from part of his own body, and at the woman's behest eats of the forbidden fruit of "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." With her he is then driven from the garden, under the curse of brief life and heavy labor, since should he eat--or continue to eat?--of the fruit of the "tree of life," not previously forbidden, he might go on living forever. He becomes the father of Cain and of Abel, and of Seth at a time after the murder of Abel. According to Genesis 5:3, 5 Adam is aged 130 years at the birth of Seth and lives to the age of 930 years.
3. Teachings of the Narrative: That man was meant by the Creator to be in a peculiar sense His own "image"; that he is the divinely appointed ruler over all his fellow-creatures on earth; and that he enjoys, together with them, God's blessing upon a creature fit to serve the ends for which it was created--these things lie upon the surface of Genesis 1:26-31. In like manner 2 through 4 tell us that the gift of a blessed immortality was within man's reach; that his Creator ordained that his moral development should come through an inward trial, not as a mere gift; and that the presence of suffering in the world is due to sin, the presence of sin to the machinations of a subtle tempter. The development of the doctrine of the fall belongs to the New Testament.
See ADAM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT; FALL, THE.
4. Adam in Apocrypha: Allusions to the narrative of the creation and the fall of man, covering most points of the narrative of Genesis 1:1-31 through 4, are found in 2 Esdras 3:4-7, 10, 21, 26; 4:30; 2 Esdras 6:54-56; 2 Esdras 7:11, 46-48; Tobit 8:6, Wisdom of Solomon 2:23 f; 9:2 f; 10:1 f, Ecclesiasticus 15:14; Ecclesiasticus 17:1-4; 25:24; 40:1; 49:16. In both 2esdras and The Wisdom of Solomon we read that death came upon all men through Adam's sin, while 2 Esdras 4:30 declares that "a grain of evil seed was sown in the heart of Adam from the beginning." Aside from this doctrinal development the Apocrypha offers no additions to the Old Testament narrative.
F. K. Farr
Adam, Books of
Adam, Books of - Books pretending to give the life and deeds of Adam and other Old Testament worthies existed in abundance among the Jews and the early Christians. The Talmud speaks of a Book of Adam, which is now lost, but which probably furnished some of the material which appears in early Christian writings. The Vita Adami was translated from the Ethiopic by Dillmann (1853), and into English by Malan (The Book of Adam and Eve, London, 1882). The Testament of Adam is a portion of the Vita Adami (published by Renan in 1853) and so probably is the Diatheke ton Protoplaston (Fabricius, II, 83).
See APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE; APOCRYPHA.
M. O. Evans
Adam, City of
Adam, City of - ('adham, "red" or BDB "made"): A city in the middle of the Jordan valley near ZARETHAN (Joshua 3:16), which see. The name probably survives at the Damieh Ford, near the mouth of the Jabbok twenty miles above Jericho. An Arabian historian asserts that about 1265 AD the Jordan was here blocked by a land slide. The inner gorge of the Jordan is here narrow with high banks which would facilitate such an obstruction as permitted the waters to "pile up" above to Adam and run out below, permitting Joshua's host to cross on dry land (SWP, II, 15; Wright, SCOTH, 130-34).
George Frederick Wright
Adamah
Adamah - ad'-a-ma ('adhamah; Adami): A fortified city in the territory of Naphtali, named between Chinnereth and Ramah (Joshua 19:36). It is probably identical with the modern 'Admah, a ruin on the plateau about 10 miles North of Beisan.
Adamant
Adamant - ad'-a-mant (shamir (Ezekiel 3:9; Zechariah 7:12)): In the passages cited and in Jeremiah 17:1, where it is rendered "diamond" the word shamir evidently refers to a hard stone. The word adamant ("unconquerable") is used in the early Greek writers for a hard metal, perhaps steel, later for a metal-like gold and later for the diamond. The Hebrew shamir, the Greek adamas (from which word "diamond" as well as "adamant" is derived) and the English adamant occur regularly in figurative expressions. All three are equally indefinite. Adamant may therefore be considered a good translation for shamir, though the Septuagint does not use adamas in the passages cited. There is a possible etymological identification of shamir with the Greek smyris (smeris or smiris), emery, a granular form of corundum well known to the ancients and used by them for polishing and engraving precious stones. Corundum in all its forms, including the sapphire and ruby, is in the scale of hardness next to the diamond. In English Versions of the Bible Isaiah 5:6; Isaiah 7:23-25; 9:18; 10:17; 27:4; 32:13, shamir is translated "brier".
Alfred Ely Day
Adami
Adami - ad'-a-mi; a-da'-mi: Mentioned in the King James Version as a separate name, where the Revised Version (British and American) has ADAMI-NEKEB, which see (Joshua 19:33).
Adami-nekeb
Adami-nekeb - ad'-a-mi ne'-keb 'adhami ha-neqebh, "the ground of the piercing," that is of the pass, or defile): A place mentioned in indicating the border of Naphtali (Joshua 19:33). In the King James Version, Adami and Nekeb are given as separate names, and it is an open question which view of the matter is correct. Most of the Greek texts give the names as two. The Vulgate has "Adami quae est Neceb." The Jerusalem Talmud gives two names, though instead of Hannekeb or Nekeb it has Siyadathah (Meg 1 1, or Neubauer's Geog du Talmud, 225). In the list of places conquered by Thothmes III of Egypt occurs the name NQBU (Tomkins, Rec of Past, new series, V, 47), which seems to be the same with Neqeb.
The list of names for the border of Naphtali (Joshua 19:33-34) has no name in common with the list of cities (Joshua 19:35-38) unless Adami and Adamah are the same. The PE Survey maps locate Adamah at Damieh, about seven miles northwest of the exit of the Jordan from the Lake of Galilee, and Adami at Khurbet Adamah, five or six miles south of the exit. Conder, Tomkins and others place Adami at Damieh, and identify Nekeb by its Talmudic name in the neighboring ruin Seiyadeh. Conder says (art. "Nekeb," HDB) that the "pass" implied in the name Nekeb "is probably one leading from the eastern precipices near Tiberias."
Willis J. Beecher
Adan
Adan - a'-dan.
See ADDAN.
Adar (1)
Adar (1) - a-'dar ('adhar, meaning uncertain): The Babylonian name of the twelfth month of the year. Used in the Bible only in Ezra 6:15 and eight times in Esther. At first the author in Esther defines Adar as the twelfth month, but afterward omits the numeral. In order to maintain the relation of the year to the seasons it was customary to add a second Adar, as often as was needed, as an intercalary month.
Adar (2)
Adar (2) - a'-dar: In the King James Version (Joshua 15:3) for ADDAR, which see.
Adarsa
Adarsa - a-dar'-sa.
See ADASA.
Adasa
Adasa - ad'-a-sa (Adasa; the King James Version Adarsa): A town less than four miles from Beth-horon (30 furlongs Ant, XII, x, 5; 1 Maccabees 7:40) and a day's journey from Gazara (1 Maccabees 7:45), where Judas Maccabee defeated and killed Nicanor, a general of Demetrius (1 Maccabees 7:40 ff). The ruin of Adaseh near Gibeon (SWP, III, XVII).
Adbeel
Adbeel - ad'-be-el ('adhbe'el, "God's discipline," possibly): The third of the twelve sons of Ishmael (Genesis 25:13; 1 Chronicles 1:29). The name appears in the Assyrian records as that of a north Arabian tribe residing somewhere Southwest of the Dead Sea.
Add
Add - (1) epidiatassomai, "to add to," "to arrange in addition": Found only in Galatians 3:15, which may thus be paraphrased: "To take a familiar illustration: even a man's will, when ratified, no third party may annul or supplement" (Dummelow, in the place cited.).
(2) epitithemi, "to put upon," "If any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues" (Revelation 22:18). The book is not to be falsified by addition or excision (see BOOK) by the interpolation of unauthorized doctrines or the neglect of essential ones (compare Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32).
M. O. Evans
Addan
Addan - ad'-an ('addan; in Neh 'addon; connected in some way with the name of the god Addu): A name mentioned in the list of the returning exiles (Ezra 2:59, duplicated in Nehemiah 7:61). It is one of several names of Babylonian localities from which came men who were unable to declare their genealogy as Israelites.
Addar
Addar - ad'-ar ('addar, "glorious"):
See ARD
(1) A grandson of Benjamin, sometimes counted as one of his sons (1 Chronicles 8:3).
(2) A town on the southern border of Judah (Joshua 15:3, the King James Version "Adar"). The same as Hazar-addar (Numbers 34:4).
Adder
Adder - ad'-er (`akhshubh (Psalms 140:3); pethen (Psalms 58:4); tsiph`oni (Proverbs 23:32); shephiphon (Genesis 49:17); tsepha` (King James Version margin; Isaiah 14:29)): This word is used for several Hebrew originals. In each case a poisonous serpent is clearly indicated by the context. It is impossible to tell in any case just what species is meant, but it must be remembered that the English word adder is used very ambiguously. It is from the Anglo-Saxon noedre, a snake or serpent, and is the common English name for Vipera berus, L, the common viper, which is found throughout Europe and northern Asia, though not in Bible lands; but the word "adder" is also used for various snakes, both poisonous and non-poisonous, found in different parts of the world. In America, for instance, both the poisonous moccasin (Ancistrodon) and the harmless hog-nosed snakes (Heterodon) are called adders.
See SERPENT.
Alfred Ely Day
Addi
Addi - ad'-i (Addi; Addei): An ancestor of Joseph, the husband of Mary, mother of Jesus; fourth from Zerubbabel in the ascending genealogical series (Luke 3:28).
Addict
Addict - a-dikt': Found only in the King James Version of 1 Corinthians 16:15, for Greek tasso. The house of Stephanus is said to be "addicted to the ministry of the saints," i.e. they have so "arranged" their affairs as to make of this service a prime object; the Revised Version (British and American) "set themselves to minister."
Addo
Addo - ad'-o (Codex Alexandrinus, Addo; Codex Vaticanus, Eddein) = Iddo (Ezra 5:1; 6:14): The father (Zechariah 1:1, 7 grandfather) of Zechariah the prophet (1 Esdras 6:1).
Addon
Addon - ad'-on.
See ADDAN.
Addus
Addus - ad'-us (Addous): The descendants of Addus (sons of Solomon's servants) returned with Zerubbabel to Jerusalem (1 Esdras 5:34). Omitted in Ezra 2:1-70 and Nehemiah 7:1-73.
Ader
Ader - a'-der: Used in 1 Chronicles 8:15 the King James Version for EDER, which see.
Adiabene
Adiabene - a-di-a-be'-ne (Adiabene): A state lying on the east of the Tigris, on the greater and lesser rivers Zab, in the territory of ancient Assyria. For the half-century terminating with the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, Adiabene is especially interesting by reason of the careers of its king, Izates, and his mother Helena, who became Jews. They had their part in the Jewish-Roman wars, and in various ways were typical of the existing situation. (See Ant,XX , 2-5;BJ ,II , xvi, 4; xix. 2; V, iv, 2; vi. 1; xi. 5; VI, vi, 4.) Somewhat later Adiabene was absorbed into the Roman Empire and became one of the six provinces which formed the larger province of Assyria, though Pliny and Ammianus sometimes call the large province by the name Adiabene.
Willis J. Beecher
Adida
Adida - ad'-i-da (Adida). A town of the Benjamin tribe near Lod and Ono located upon a hill facing the "plain country" of Judea, rebuilt and fortified by Simon Maccabee (1 Maccabees 12:38), who later encamped here to meet the army of Tryphon (1 Maccabees 13:13; Ant, XIII, vi, 5). It was also here that Aretas, king of Arabia, met Alexander Janneus in battle and defeated him (Ant., XIII, xv, 2). Perhaps the El-Haditheh of today located about three miles east of Lydda or Lod.
See HADID.
Adiel
Adiel - ad'-i-el (`adhi'el, "ornament of God"):
(1) One of the "princes" of the tribe of Simeon, who, in the days of Hezekiah, smote the aborigines of Gedor and captured the valley (1 Chronicles 4:36 ff).
(2) Father of Maasai, one of the priests who dwelt in Jerusalem after the return from the Exile (1 Chronicles 9:12).
(3) Father of Azmaveth who was over David's treasures (1 Chronicles 27:25).
Adin
Adin - a'-din (`adhin, "adorned"): The name of a family, "the sons of Adin" (Ezra 2:15; 8:6; Nehemiah 7:20; 10:16; 1 Esdras 5:14; 8:32), mentioned among the returning exiles. The list in Ezra 2:1-70 is placed in the midst of the narrative concerning Zerubbabel, but its title and Its contents show that it also includes the later Jewish immigrants into Palestine. The list in Nehemiah 7:1-73 is a duplicate of that in Ezr, but with variations; most of the variations are naturally accounted for by supposing that one copy was made later than the other and was brought up to date. In Ezr and 1esdras the number of the sons of Adin is said to be 454; in Neh it is 655. The 50 males, led by Ebed the son of Jonathan, who came with Ezr, may or may not have been included in the numbers just mentioned. Among the names of those who sealed the covenant along with Neh are 44 that are placed under the caption "the chiefs of the people" (Nehemiah 10:14-26), and nearly half of these are the family names of the list in Ezra 2:1-70 and Nehemiah 7:1-73. It is natural to infer that in these cases a family sealed the covenant collectively through some representative. In that case the Adin here mentioned is the same that is mentioned in the other places.
See also ADINU.
Willis J. Beecher
Adina
Adina - ad'-i-na, a-di'-na (`adhina', "adorned"). "Adina the son of Shiza the Reubenite, a chief of the Reubenites, and thirty with him" (1 Chronicles 11:42). This is in that part of the list of David's mighty men in which the Chronicler supplements the list given in 2 Samuel.
Adino
Adino - ad'-i-no, a-di'-no (`adhino, "his adorned one"): The senior of David's "mighty men." "Josheb-basshebeth a Tahchemonite, chief of the captains; the same was Adino the Eznite, against eight hundred slain at one time" (2 Samuel 23:8). This very exact rendering makes it evident even to an English reader that the text is imperfect. Ginsburg offers a corrected form taken substantially from the parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 11:11: "Jashobeam a son of a Hachmonite, chief of the captains; he lifted up his spear." This is plausible, and is very generally accepted, and eliminates the names Adino and Eznite, which do not occur elsewhere in the Bible. Some of the facts are against this. The Septuagint has the names Adino and Eznite. The Latin finds no proper names in the passage, but so translates the words as to presuppose the Hebrew text as we have it. It may be a case for suspended judgment.
The texts concerning David's mighty men are fragmentary both in Samuel and in Chronicles. If they were more complete they would perhaps make it clear that the three seniors were comrades of David at Pas-dammim, Ephes-dammim (1 Chronicles 11:13; 1 Samuel 17:1); and that we have in them additional details concerning that battle. The record says that on the death of Goliath the Philistines fled and the Israelites pursued (1 Samuel 17:52 ff), but it is not improbable that during the retreat portions of the Philistine force rallied, so that there was strenuous fighting.
Willis J. Beecher
Adinu; Adin
Adinu; Adin - ad'-i-nu, ad'-in (Adinou, 1 Esdras 5:14; Adin, 1 Esdras 8:32): Compare Adin (Ezra 2:15; 8:6; Nehemiah 7:20; 10:16). The descendants of Adin (leaders of the nation) returned with their families to Jerusalem: one party being with Zerubbabel (454 members 1 Esdras 5:14), a second party with Ezra (250 members 1 Esdras 8:32).
Adinus
Adinus - ad'-i-nus.
See IADINUS (Apocrypha).