Acts 8


Acts 8 is the eighth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the burial of Stephen, the beginnings of Christian persecution, and the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of Samaria and Ethiopia. The book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.

Text

The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 40 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:
This chapter mentions the following places:
The writer of Acts introduces Saul, later the Apostle Paul, as an active witness of Stephen's death in, and confirmed his approval in [|Acts 8:1a]. Reuben Torrey, in his Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, suggests that this clause "evidently belongs to the conclusion of the previous chapter".

Verse 1

The narrative is focused around two geographical poles: Jerusalem, where the apostles stay and the 'countryside of Judea and Samaria' where the rest of the church is 'scattered throughout, with unnamed disciples continuing the apostles' task to preach the gospel, as the church history moves on to the middle stage of the apostolic commission in The story of church's expansion is interwoven with the record of Stephen's burial and the hint of Saul future as a zealous instigator of the persecution, indicating that the community most affected by the wave of persecution to follow was the one to which both Stephen and Saul belonged, the 'synagogues of diaspora origin', because by the time of a group of 'disciples' is still in Jerusalem alongside the apostles.

Verse 4

While the apostles remain in Jerusalem, 'unnamed disciples exploit their scattered condition to spread the gospel'.

Philip's mission in Samaria (8:5–13)

The story of Philip's preaching serves as an example of 'a highly successful work of
evangelism, accompanied by miraculous healings which impress the population'. The work brings about wonders, 'belief and baptism, i.e. intellectual conviction and entry into a new community', which even impresses a competitor, Simon , who used to 'bewitch' the Samaritans with sorceries.

Verse 5

This section highlights 'two related issues of church order':
  1. The role of the apostles: in a supervisory role to keep an eye on new developments and to perform 'apostolic visitation'.
  2. Baptism and the Spirit: The event sequence seems to imply that 'baptism in the name of Jesus' and the reception of the Spirit were 'two distinct events for the Samaritans' and that the Spirit could only come with the laying on of hands by the apostles, but this should not be treated as a universal formula, because elsewhere in the book, the Spirit comes before baptism, or is not recorded at all.

    Verse 16

Philip's another significant evangelistic task is to meet an Ethiopian on the way to Gaza, following the divine guidance, both angel and
and Spirit. In this part, Luke shows the exact
geography of Philip's route: due south from
Samaria intersects at Eleutheropolis with the Jerusalem–Gaza road, Philip's path crosses the route of the Ethiopian pilgrim, heading west to strike the coast road towards Egypt.

Verse 37

This verse is absent from the majority of the Greek manuscripts, but it is present in some, including E. It is cited by Irenaeus and by Cyprian, and is found in the Old Latin and the Vulgate translations. In his notes Erasmus says that he took this reading from the margin of 4ap and incorporated it into the Textus Receptus. J. A. Alexander suggested that this verse, though genuine, was omitted by many scribes, "as unfriendly to the practice of delaying baptism, which had become common, if not prevalent, before the end of the 3rd century."
from the 9th century.

Verse 40