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The Acts of the Apostles is a misnomer for Luke's second 'treatise. It tells the work of Peter alone among the Twelve. The Hellenists Stephen and Philip, the Cypriote Barnabas, and the man of Tarsus greater than them all these spread the name of Christ beyond the limits of the Holy City and the chosen people.
He was not a grim hermit, but He had the riches of an eternal life. The intellectual Greeks and Hellenists climbed to the idea of one God and of Logos, the Mediator between God and the world, through whom God created whatever He created, and who may be incarnated for the salvation of the fallen, suffering creation.
These last were further subdivided into two classes, the one being of Jewish blood, the other being proselytes, that is to say, people of non-Israelitish origin, allied in divers degrees to Judaism. These Hellenists, who almost all came from Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, or Cyrene, lived at Jerusalem in distinct quarters. They had their separate synagogues, and formed thus little communities apart.
We first hear of him as one of the Seven who were chosen by the Church, at the suggestion of the Apostles, in order to meet the grumbling of that section of the Church, who were called 'Hellenists, about their people being neglected in the distribution of alms. He stands in that list next to Stephen, who was obviously the leader.
Moreover, desirous as the Romans were of becoming thorough Hellenists, they wanted for it that milder humanity which is so distinctly traceable in Grecian history, poetry, and art, even in the time of Homer.
Seven centuries of struggle, and many hundred thousand folios, were the results of the remarkable fusion which followed. Out of these elements, united in various proportions, rose successively the Alexandrian philosophy, the Hellenists, the Therapeutæ, those strange Essene communists, with the innumerable sects of Gnostic or Christian heretics.
It is also certain that the outcry against the Christians in Jerusalem which led to the death of Stephen did not start among the native Jews but among the Hellenists those who belonged to the synagogues of the freedmen and of the Cyrenaeans, Alexandrians, Cilicians, and Asians, who had synagogues in Jerusalem.
So thought these ardent Hellenists, and a burning zeal possessed them to mate dramatic poetry with a music that would heighten and intensify its expression and effect. They who seek are sure to find, even if it be not always the object of their search. In the earnest quest of these reformers for dramatic truth an unexpected treasure was disclosed.
Straight to the synagogue, as before, they went. It was their best introduction to the new field. There, if we take the plain words of Acts xiv. 1, they found a new thing, 'Greeks, heathens pure and simple, not Hellenists or Greek-speaking Jews, nor even proselytes, in the synagogue.
How great it was will appear if we observe that the weight of authority among critics and commentators sees here an extension of the message of salvation to Greeks, that is, to pure heathens, and not a mere preaching to Hellenists, that is, to Greek- speaking Jews born outside Palestine. If that be correct, this was a great stride forward in the development of the Church.
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