37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” 38 Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” 40 And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41 So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. [Acts 2:37-42, NRSV]
The First Christians in Kiev, by Vasily Perov, 1880
The Acts of the Apostles, part II of Luke’s two-part work, offers a valuable history of the early Christian church. Luke’s Gospel concludes where Acts begins, with Christ’s Ascension into heaven. Probably written in Rome around 70 – 90 AD, it gives us important information about the origin and the growth of Christianity under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The early Christians, under the pen of Luke, were people of the Spirit who soon spread the message of Christ throughout the Roman Empire.
An area that captures perennial interest is the life in the early Church. In depicting the life of the early Christians in general, Luke listed four terms in Acts 2:42 to describe the activities of the new members of the community.
The first term is “the apostles’ teaching” (didache).
- Luke’s understanding of the apostles include the original twelve appointed by Jesus (Luke 6:13-16), and later reconstituted after the loss of Judas (Acts 1:15-26). But, unlike the other evangelists, Luke extended the list to include Paul and Barnabas (Acts 14:4, 14). Intending the Acts of the Apostles to continue the activity and teaching of Jesus (Acts 1:1), Luke presents the apostles as authenticated witnesses to supply substance to that continuity. In point of fact, the purpose of Acts is stipulated programmatically in 1:8: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” In pinpointing the origin of the Church in Christ and the Holy Spirit, Luke at the same time depicts this emergence of Christianity from its specific Jewish cultural-religious background into a religion that spread to the rest of the world.
- Stage by stage, Luke depicts the Word of God spreading from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria, to Caesarea and Galilee, to Damascus, Phonecis, Cyprus, and Syrian Antioch, to the Roman provinces and finally to Rome as “the end of the earth”.
- Luke crafted a narrative where the apostles knew very well their pivotal role in their link to Jesus. Thus, early in Acts, Jesus’ departure from earth took place “after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen” (Acts 1:2). The link to the apostles is then weaved through the stories of their replicating Jesus’ ministry and miracles and teaching (see, e.g., Acts 2:14, 22, 43; 3:12; 4:33; 5:12; 20, 25). The apostles themselves are portrayed as understanding the singular significance of their teaching role when they determined that, in the face of competing claims on their time from different needs in the nascent community, they would devote themselves to “prayer and to the ministry of the word” rather than to serve tables (Acts 6:2-4).
- What then did “the apostles’ teaching” consist of? A few things are fairly clear. First, Luke did not convey the idea that the apostles were handing a formal set of teaching or instructions. Instead, the apostles’ proclamation generally is called teaching (see Acts 5:28). Second, similarly, when by calling on “the hand of the Lord” to make Elymas the magician blind right in front of the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, what Paul did and said was also depicted as “teaching of the Lord” (13:12). Third, it is worth noting that while this teaching activity could have taken place in the setting of a public gathering, it could likewise be given from house to house (20:20).
The second term is “fellowship” (koinōnia).
- This term is used only once in Luke’s writings. For that reason, we may have to refer to the other usages in the New Testament to extract its implications. In that case, Koinōnia appears in the other New Testament books in two ways. First, it is used principally in relation to a close relationship or sharing in common with others something or someone, especially Christ (see, e.g., 1 Cor 1:9; Gal 2:9; 1 John 1:3). Second, koinōniaI is used of sharing with, or contributing to, those in need (see, e.g., Rom 15:26; 2 Cor 8:4). In the first, “relationship” usage, Luke would be conveying the idea of Christian gathering for purposes of building up community-association. But, under the second idea of Christians contributing to the material needs of each other, Luke would be using fellowship to indicate the sharing of material possessions. It seems very likely that Luke is pointing to Christian gatherings as involving the charitable distribution of goods to the poor.
The third element referred to in Acts 2:42 is “the breaking of bread”.
- It is easy, and temptingly so, to jump straight into assuming that “the breaking of bread” is a reference to the Last Supper. But this is not correct. In the Jewish setting, which was the case in the early church community in Jerusalem, the term referred only to the act of breaking bread and the accompanying blessing at the beginning of a meal. Luke has actually preserved this distinction in the three other uses of the term.
[i] In the short descriptive section of the Jerusalem church in Acts 2:43-47, which comes right after our present text of 2:42, Luke reports: “And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts.”
[ii] On the night before Paul’s departure from Troas, he broke bread and ate and continued talking (20:11).
[iii] Even of the Emmaus story where Jesus is said to be recognized when “he took bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them” (Luke 24:30), the common assumption that the breaking of bread by Jesus caused the two disciples to recall the Last Supper is incorrect and an overreach. It is true that the previous occasion when Luke portrays Jesus breaking bread is in the story of the Last Supper (Luke 22:19). But, it is a fact that Cleopas and companion were not at the Last Supper where all three Synoptic Gospels portray Jesus sitting at table with the apostles (see Luke 22:14, Matthew 26:20, and Mark 14:17). Consequently, it is more accurate to say that Luke intends to convey that Jesus’ habit of breaking bread and praying at the beginning of a meal was something generally recognizable to his disciples. A clear example given by Jesus which must be of common knowledge is the story of the feeding of the five thousand (Luke 9:16).
It appears that we can justifiably conclude that by “breaking of the bread”, Luke was referring to the Jewish act at the beginning of a meal, including the prayers, rather than to the Last Supper.
Finally, the fourth term is “the prayers” (proseuchais – plural with the article).
- In the first place, it is true that grammatically speaking, “the breaking of bread and the prayers” tied the two items together and might in that sense be counted as one.
- However, that would be to ignore Luke’s stress through the use of the plural noun “prayers” with the article on the followers of Jesus being faithful to the appointed times of Jewish prayer. Peter and John, for example, were said to be “going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour” (3:1). Furthermore, the apostles declared that they had to devote themselves to prayers (6:4).
- Naturally, therefore, those who have joined the group are portrayed by Luke in Acts 2:42 as picking up the same devotion to prayers the leaders and other disciples have shown in Acts 1:14.
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, September 2022. All rights reserved.
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