Acts 11:26-28

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Acts 11:26 sn Antioch was a city in Syria (not Antioch in Pisidia). See the note in 11:19.
2. Acts 11:26 tn Grk “So it happened that” The introductory phrase ἐγένετο (egeneto, “it happened that”), common in Luke (69 times) and Acts (54 times), is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated.
3. Acts 11:26 tn Grk “year they”; the referents (Barnabas and Saul) have been specified in the translation for clarity.
4. Acts 11:26 tn Grk “a significant crowd.”
5. Acts 11:26 sn Antioch was a city in Syria (not Antioch in Pisidia). See the note in 11:19.
6. Acts 11:26 sn The term Christians appears only here, in Acts 26:28, and 1 Pet 4:16 in the NT.
7. Acts 11:27 tn Grk “In these days,” but the dative generally indicates a specific time.
8. Acts 11:27 tn The word “some” is not in the Greek text, but is usually used in English when an unspecified number is mentioned.
9. Acts 11:27 sn Prophets are mentioned only here and in 13:1 and 21:10 in Acts.
10. Acts 11:27 sn Came down from Jerusalem. Antioch in Syria lies due north of Jerusalem. In Western languages it is common to speak of north as “up” and south as “down,” but the NT maintains the Hebrew idiom which speaks of any direction away from Jerusalem as down (since Mount Zion was thought of in terms of altitude).
11. Acts 11:27 sn Antioch was a city in Syria (not Antioch in Pisidia). See the note in 11:19.
12. Acts 11:28 tn Grk “getting up, predicted.” The participle ἀναστάς (anastas) has been translated as a finite verb due to requirements of contemporary English style.
13. Acts 11:28 tn Or “made clear”; Grk “indicated beforehand” (BDAG 920 s.v. σημαίνω 2).
14. Acts 11:28 tn Grk “great.”
15. Acts 11:28 sn This famine is one of the firmly fixed dates in Acts. It took place from a.d. 45-48. The events described in chap. 11 of Acts occurred during the early part of that period.
16. Acts 11:28 tn Or “whole Roman Empire.” While the word οἰκουμένη (oikoumenē) does occasionally refer specifically to the Roman Empire, BDAG 699 s.v. οἰκουνένη 2 does not list this passage (only Acts 24:5 and 17:6).
17. Acts 11:28 tn Grk “world, which.” The relative pronoun (“which”) was replaced by the demonstrative pronoun “this” and a new sentence was begun in the translation at this point to improve the English style, due to the length of the sentence in Greek.
18. Acts 11:28 sn This is best taken as a parenthetical note by the author. Claudius was the Roman emperor Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus, known as Claudius, who ruled from a.d. 41-54.