The Acts of the Apostles

66 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
which was felt already at an early date; we must
therefore delete 'lovSaiav.^ We can of course give
no satisfactory explanation for the interpolation of
this word. The irregularity of the use of the article
in this section is surprising, so also the appended
KjO?Te? Koi *'AjOa/3e?, — here also we must assume
an ancient gloss, for both the special mention of
these people and their combination together is ex-
traordinary. The assumption of an interpolation
becomes yet more probable if the preceding words
^'^lovSaloL T€ Koi. 7r/)0(7?i\fT0t" I
belong not only to
" 01 eiTL^riij.ovvre's 'Pcojuaioh'' but to all the foregoing
national names, as is almost certainly the case. The
author had said at the beginning of the list that
he was concerned with those Jezcs now dwelling in
Jerusalem who had before lived in Parthia, Media,
&c. At the conclusion he says more exactly that
these included both Jews by birth and proselytes, and
this without doubt answered to the truth, and did
not apply only to Rome. Strange, lastly, is the
epithet " eTriSiijuLOvvreg " applied to ol 'Vwjuiaioi. In
my opinion it finds its explanation in the fact that
ol 'Yco/maioi could be understood as meaning " Roman
citizens" {vide Acts xvi. 37, 38; xxii. 25, 26, 27, 29;
xxiii. 27). St. Luke wishes to avoid this ambiguity.
Instead of ol eTriSrjujL. 'Pcoyu. he might also have written
ol KaToiKovvT€9 Tr]v 'Ycojuifjv (as in verse 9); but he
wished at the close to remind us that the people in
question throughout now dwelt in Jerusalem, though
^ Mesopotamia and Cappadocia could very well be mentioned
together for they are contiguous, and as the counting is from East
to West this order is specially appropriate {vide infra another reason
for the omission).
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