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Acts 11:1. For Western readings see critical notices.—κατὰ τὴν Ἰ.: not simply in but throughout Judæa, “all about Judæa,” Hort, Ecclesia, p. 57, cf. Acts 8:1.

Acts 11:2. διεκρίνοντο, cf. Jude, Acts 11:9, with dative of the person (Polyb., ii., 22, 11). For similar construction as here see LXX, Ezekiel 20:35-36, see Grimm-Thayer, sub v. Otherwise in Acts 10:20.—οἱ ἐκ περιτομῆς, cf. Galatians 2:12; we can scarcely confine the term here to those mentioned in Acts 10:45 (although Dr. Hort takes this view as most probable), but how far there was a section of the Church at Jerusalem who could thus be described at this time it is difficult to say, see Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 44.

Acts 11:3. ἀκροβυστίαν ἔχοντας: the expression intimates the bitterness of the opposition. Bengel curiously comments “benigne loquuntur”. On ἀκροβ. see especially Kennedy, Sources of N. T. Greek, p. 111.—καὶ συνέφαγες αὐτοῖς: this was the real charge, the violation of the ceremonial law, cf. Acts 10:28; see on the intolerant division between Pharisaical Jews and Gentiles, Weber, Jüdische Theol., pp. 59, 60; Edersheim, Jewish Social Life, pp. 26–28. There is therefore nothing in the statement to justify the objection raised by Zeller and others against the whole narrative of the baptism of Cornelius (so Wendt, edition 1888 and 1899). But if the complaint against Peter was based not upon the fact that he had baptised Cornelius but had eaten with him, then we can see a great difference between the narrative here and that of the Ethiopian eunuch in chap. 8. In the latter case there was no question of the obligations of the ceremonial law—the baptism was administered and Philip and the eunuch separated, but here the whole stress of the narrative lies in the fact referred to in Acts 11:3, so that if the eunuch and Cornelius both belonged to the class of “half-proselytes” their cases are not parallel. But even if they were, in other respects there would still remain a distinction between them. It was one thing for the Ethiopian to be received into the Church of Christ by the Hellenist Philip, but it was another thing—and a marked advance—when the principle asserted by Philip was ratified by the Apostles of the circumcision in the case of Cornelius. Wendt, edition 1899, pp. 181, 198, and Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 300.

Acts 11:4. ἀρξ. δὲ ὁ Π. “But Peter began, and expounded the matter”: ἀρξ. may be pleonastic, Acts 1:4, cf. καθεξῆς, or may be used graphically, or because the reproaches of οἱ ἐκ περιτ. gave the first incentive to St. Peter’s recital.—καθ. only in Luke, Gospel and Acts, see Acts 3:24.—ἐξετίθετο, Acts 18:26, Acts 28:23, Jos., Ant., i., 12, 2, so also in Polyb., x., 9, 3. Perhaps used here by St. Luke from its use by Dioscorides; familiar word to him also as a physician, see Vogel, p. 17. Evidently St. Luke by the two accounts attaches great significance to this first reception, exceptional case as it was, of a Gentile proselyte like Cornelius into the Christian Church, but it was an isolated case, and moreover a case within Palestine, not beyond its borders, so that the great questions of a mission to the Gentiles of the heathen world, and of the conditions for their reception as Christians, were not matter for consideration as afterwards in chap. 15, see Wendt, edition 1899, p. 211; Hort, Ecclesia, pp. 58, 59; and see below on Acts 11:12.

Acts 11:6. κατενόουν, cf. Acts 7:31-32, Matthew 7:3, Luke 6:41, R.V., etc., the seeing is the result of the considering—“contemplabar singula, effectus comprehenditur aoristo” εἶδον.—θηρία: not specially mentioned in Acts 10:12 (see critical notes), but there πάντα precedes τετράποδα.

Acts 11:8. εἰσῆλθεν, cf. Matthew 15:11; Matthew 15:17. Blass sees in the phrase “locutio hebraismum redolens,” cf. Acts 8:35; on the other hand the Hebraistic πᾶν of Acts 10:14 is omitted (Weiss).

Acts 11:10. ἀνεσπάσθη: only found in Luke 14:5 in N.T., another touch of vividness as in Acts 11:5-6. In LXX three times, and possibly once in Bel and the Dragon, ver. 42, of drawing up Daniel from the den (but reading may be the simple verb, see H. and R.).

Acts 11:12. μηδὲν διακρινόμενον, cf. Acts 10:20, but if we read (see critical notes) μ. διακρίναντα, “making no distinction,” R.V.—οἱ ἓξ ἀδελφοὶ οὗτοι: who had been with Peter at Cæsarea, and had returned with him to Jerusalem, see Acts 10:45. Hilgenfeld would regard them as constant companions of St. Peter on his Apostolic journeys. Differences such as these between the narrative here and that in Acts 10:23 where the brethren are mentioned without their number constrain Feine to regard Acts 11:1-18 as derived like the earlier narrative in 10 from one and the same source, not as added by a reviser (although he excludes Acts 11:1; Acts 11:18 in 11 from the original narrative). Spitta agrees with Feine in this view of Acts 11:2-17; a forger writing with a “tendency” would have smoothed away any apparent discrepancies, as Zöckler well points out. With regard to the whole Cornelius episode, Spitta and Feine (so Weiss and Wendt), inasmuch as they regard St. Luke’s narrative as containing at least a genuine historical kernel, and as marking a special exceptional case, and not a general rule as existing at such an early time, are much less radical than Weizsäcker, Holtzmann, and Clemen. For a good review of the relation of modern criticism to the narrative see Wendt (1899) on Acts 10:1 and Zöckler, Apostelgeschichte, pp. 226, 227 (second edition).