Foreigners
The sixth in a series of talks on the Acts of the Apostles at Nedlands Anglican Church 14 April 2024
We need to look ahead and ask where Luke is going, if we are to appreciate what comes next in our story. Luke is involved in, and passionately concerned for the movement of the Way (Christianity) among the Gentiles (non-Jews, foreigners). He is not a Jew himself. At the time he writes the opening of the boundary between Jew and non-Jew is controversial, and the movement is largely associated with the name of Rabbi Saul. Luke has just related the circumstances of Saul’s conversion, and his initial troubled acceptance by Christians in Jerusalem. He now leaves him alone and turns again to Peter’s story. Why is this? Later, he will return to Paul.
His reason is simple. Contrary to the popular understanding, the welcoming of Gentiles among the people of God without the requirement of circumcision was something initiated not by Paul, but Peter.
Having introduced Saul as a man with a God-given mission, Luke describes two incidents from Peter’s mission that took place in Judaea—in Lydda (Lod) and Joppa (Tel Aviv) on Israel’s coastal plain. In both incidents Peter performs a miracle remarkably like Jesus.
Luke is knowledgeable about the geography of the coastal plain. Once he traveled from Caesarea to Jerusalem with Paul. Now he describes Peter’s descent from Jerusalem, and ministry, first in Lydda, then in Joppa and the Plain of Sharon. Luuk Vanderweghe comments on the accuracy of Luke’s geographical knowledge of this area and asks how many modern scholars, if they were given a map of Palestine would be able to place many of its cities in proper relation to each other.[1] Since Luke has been there, it is likely he has local accounts of the two miracles he narrates. It is significant that both people have names, and in Joppa the name of Peter’s host is given. Names are not often attached to people in miracle stories unless there is a reason—often to identify a witness. Simon the Tanner will account for stories about Joppa.
Lydda and Joppa were the two most important cities on the coastal plain with majority Jewish populations. Caesarea nearby, the Roman capital, had a mixed population of Jews and non-Jews. There are already disciples in these towns, not surprising, since Jesus’ ministry had previously affected the whole country. Peter is engaged in pastoral ministry among Jews throughout the country; now that the persecution associated with Saul is over he would have been much freer to travel.
Peter heals Aeneas in a way that is reminiscent of Jesus: a cripple for eight years; Peter tells him Jesus Christ is healing him. He orders the man to stand up and make his bed. “Get up, take your mat and go home,” Jesus said to the paraplegic in Capernaum.
Next he is summoned to Joppa by friends of the woman Tabitha.
Whether they expected Peter to bring her back to life is not clear, but it is understandable they would wish him to visit if he was in the area. Luke is careful to identify the woman by her Greek name, Dorcas, which means Gazelle, but also tells us her Aramaic name, Tabitha, which has the same meaning. The reason becomes clear as the story proceeds.
The healing is so like when Jesus raised Jairus’s daughter Luke must have wanted his audiences to make the connection; it is intriguing that he says nothing to help this association except her name, Tabitha. Mark says Jesus spoke to the young girl in Aramaic: “Talitha qum!” Luke paraphrases this: ἡ παῖς, ἔγειρε, “Child, get up.” Neither he nor his audiences were particularly interested in Aramaic words. But here they become significant: Peter must have said: “Tabitha qum!” Luke’s care over her name suggests he was not unaware of the coincidence.
Why has Luke narrated just these two stories? He intends that we should be very sure of Peter’s spiritual stature as Jesus’ chief apostle. This becomes important in the Cornelius affair and its aftermath.
Cornelius
Much has been written about this Italian Cohort. Was there such a unit stationed in Palestine at the time? Several “Italian Cohorts” are attested, one of them stationed in Syria in 69 A.D. A cohort consists of about 600 men, led by a tribune (Greek: chiliarchos), roughly equivalent to today’s colonel. Tribunes were Roman knights (aristocrats); centurions commanded anything from 60 to 100 men; they were promoted from the ranks. The soldiers stationed in Palestine prior to the war were auxiliaries (not Romans), probably Syrians or Samaritans. A centurion on retirement would receive Roman citizenship. At the least, Cornelius would have represented Rome, and, if retired, was probably a Roman citizen. His settled household in Caesarea suggests this.
Caesarea, formerly the small Jewish town, Strato’s Tower, was developed into a major city by Herod the Great. Among other things Herod built the finest artificial harbour on the coastline, and an aqueduct which still stands, to bring water into the city. After Archelaus was banished, Caesarea became the headquarters of the Roman administration and army in Palestine. It is not surprising to find a centurion living there.
Luke describes Cornelius glowingly. He is “as Jewish as a Gentile can be without being a Jew.” (Stenschke) This troubles some Christians, who, like Paul, wants to emphasize that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”[2] Is Luke suggesting that people are saved because of their good works? This would put him seriously out of step with the rest of the New Testament. One needs to attend to the purpose of his account. He wishes to establish the legitimacy of non-Jews being admitted to the people of God. Cornelius was already a worshipper of Israel’s God, a man of prayer, and generous in almsgiving. In other words he was already a man of faith, like Zechariah and Simeon. This is not a conversions story. But Cornelius was a Gentile, and therefore an outsider to the covenant of Abraham. God brings him in, as a Gentile, and without asking him to be circumcised. To a fair-minded Jew this might seem less questionable than, say, a tax-collector.
Peter and Cornelius both receive supernatural revelations, underlining the objective nature of the experiences. Peter protests at the instruction to eat unclean animals. We learn something significant here: although a Galilean fisherman, he was nonetheless loyal to Israel’s culture of purity. The thought of eating pork turned his stomach. But God insists. The thrice repeated vision emphasizes its importance: “Don’t call impure anything God has made clean!” As yet, Peter doesn’t know the meaning of this, but as he is pondering it, Cornelius’s men arrive at the door.
I am surprised at what the major translations do with this phrase, meden diakrinomenos. Considering that Peter repeats it when he is called to account for his actions (11.12), it surely means Peter is not to be discriminatory over going with Gentiles, entering their home, and eating with them. Like the first Christians in Jerusalem who ate with “simple” hearts, he is to ignore the rules which formerly kept Jews and Gentile, apart (and still do!).
We need to consider how revolutionary this was, even for up-country Jews like Peter. They were schooled from the earliest age in their apartness as the people of God. Their culture was designed to enforce a kind of apartheid (apartness). Gentiles were unclean, their food was unclean, as were their homes. This was not about hygiene, but ritual purity. Jews had as little to do with them as possible, and never entered their homes or shared their food. But now God has announced to Peter that he has cleansed them; the laws of ritual impurity were now obsolete. It is not too much to say that at this point the world entered a new age. Accordingly, Peter invites the messengers into his home.
The main objection Jews had towards Gentiles is that they worshipped other gods. With his background it is not surprising that Cornelius would treat Peter as a divine figure; in correcting him as he did, Peter showed that welcoming Gentiles among the people of God does not meaning condoning idolatry.
In his sermon at Nazareth, Jesus announced “the acceptable year of the Lord.” Now, it seems, even Gentiles are to be included in this era of acceptance (forgiveness).
Peter’s language is worth studying. It is reminiscent of Isaiah’s promises of restoration in Isaiah 40–61.
In the prologue to the Gospel Luke refers to the whole Jesus-story as “the word.” Here he uses the same term to sum up all that has occurred. We might translate it as “the revelation.” But John’s description of Jesus himself as “the Word” is not far away.
The word “preach” has been introduced by the translators. It is an unfortunate word, bringing to mind what happens in church. Jesus’ gospel was a public announcement—heaven’s announcement of the coming of the kingdom of God. The Greek word euaggelizomai, which I have translated woodenly as “evangelized” means to make an important joyful announcement.
Luke summarizes Peter’s speech. It is a declaration of the gospel; interestingly it is not a bad summary of Luke’s own written Gospel. The gospel begins with the baptism of John and Jesus’ anointing (= Christing). His two-year ministry is summed up as going around, doing good, healing those oppressed by the Devil. All this was witnessed by Peter and his associates up to his crucifixion (on a tree!) and resurrection. God has appointed him as judge of the living and the dead. Everyone who believes receives forgiveness in his name.
We often state the gospel in its briefest form: Jesus is Lord. Peter does this too. But who is Jesus, and what does it mean that he is Lord? This is where the gospel story comes in. It seems Cornelius already knows some of it; it is common knowledge in Palestine. In our own sharing of the gospel we should explain who Jesus is, but also tell his story. The affirmation of Jesus’ identity (Lord) means little without filling out what we mean by Lord, and who the Jesus is we are claiming is the Lord. Jesus needs an identity and a face.
At the beginning God gave a sign for his people to recognize the coming of the Holy Spirit: they spoke in other languages. Whether this is the case today is controversial. It has not been so for most of Christian history, though at certain times of revival tongues-speaking has been a feature. It was prominent with the Corinthian Christians, and Paul has a detailed discussion of it in his first Corinthian letter. He makes it clear it can be a genuine manifestation of the Holy Spirit, though it can also be counterfeited. It is not a gift given to all, and carries certain dangers. Nevertheless, it is not to be despised, and may be edifying to some. Nowhere does the NT explain it as a necessary mark of receiving the Holy Spirit. The infallible sign of the presence of the Spirit is the (genuine) confession of Christ as Lord: “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.”[3]
Cornelius and his household’s experience is different to other cases. While the gospel is being told—presumably it is meeting with faith—the Holy Spirit comes to them, after which Peter concludes they should be baptized (as the sign of their inclusion within the family of God).
Luke’s final word should not be overlooked; it is the crux of the whole event. Peter is invited to stay and does so for some days: a Jew accepting hospitality in the home of a Gentile! It is this which raises eyebrows in Jerusalem, the home of orthodoxy.
It is the first time we have been informed about a circumcision party, though the first readers of Acts may have known of them. They appear to be Christian Jews who insist that new believers from among the Gentiles should be circumcised to bring them into the covenant with Abraham’s family. Study of Genesis will show why this view was held so seriously. One of Luke’s main purposes in Acts is to show such people that inclusion without circumcision was something ordered by God, and not a Pauline heresy.
Those from the circumcision criticized Peter. We mustn’t overlook the word diekrinontotranslated here. The word has various meanings, all to do with making ethical distinctions. They judged Peter’s actions to have been wrong: “You ate with them!”. But as he says, repeating the word, God told him to go to Cornelius “nothing discriminating.”[4]
We should be clear that the circumcision party were not objecting to preaching the gospel to Gentiles, nor to their conversion, but to their admission to the family of God, and therefore to the meal table, without their first being circumcised. To us, Luke’s repetition of the Cornelius story is tedious. But it establishes a principle of the highest importance for the rest of the history of the Christian movement. Racism and everything like it is done away with. The most serious form of apartheid in history, that between Jew and Gentile, originally ordered by God to protect the life and culture of his infant community, is abolished. Christians can go anywhere and eat with anyone with “glad and simple hearts.”
The Church in Antioch
Luke has now established the God-giveness of Gentiles becoming part of the people of God, without circumcision, and with full acceptance into table fellowship. It was through the apostle Peter that God revealed this change, not Paul. And now, and only now—Luke introduces us to perhaps the first Jew-Gentile church, which has come about in Antioch from Christians fleeing the persecution of Paul speaking the gospel to Gentiles.
There were several Antioch’s, named after a former Syrian king. Antioch on the Orontes, Syria’s capital, 500 kms north of Jerusalem, was the third city of the empire after Rome and Alexandria. Perhaps 10% of its population of 250,000 was Jewish. It was natural that Jews would speak to Jews, but some Diaspora Jews coming to Antioch spoke also to “Hellenists,” in this context non-Jewish Greek-speakers. Many believed. All this would have taken place prior to Peter’s experience with Cornelius, but that event legitimated it. Barnabas is sent to investigate and recognizes a work of the Holy Spirit. He “saw the grace of God.”
The admission of former pagans among the people of God entailed a practical problem: apart from learning of Jesus and his resurrection, they had no knowledge of the creator God, or of his choice of Israel, his promises of salvation, the ethical way of life, and much else of a specifically Christian nature. They needed to be taught, and it is noteworthy that Barnabas thinks it is necessary to travel 600 kms to fetch Saul from Tarsus to attend to that task. His knowledge of israel’s faith and the Christian gospel were both important. If ever we are involved in choosing a new pastor for a congregation today, we should consider this.
[1] The Historical Tell,
[2] Romans 3.23.
[3] 1 Corinthians 12.3.
[4] Acts 11.12; 10.20.