Acts 20


Acts 20 is the twentieth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the Christian New Testament of the Bible. It records the third missionary journey of Paul the Apostle. The narrator and his companions play an active part in the developments in this chapter. The book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke the Evangelist composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.

Text

The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 38 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:

In Koine Greek

This chapter mentions the following places :
This section records the beginning of the journey planned in, as Paul was accompanied by brothers from almost all the mission areas: Sopater, Tychicus, Aristarchus and Gaius.

Verse 2

"That region", would have included Philippi, Thessalonica and Beroea, and the churches Paul had established there. It may also have been at this time that Paul made the journey into Illyricum referred to in Romans 15:19.

Verse 4

  • "Sopater" was the son of Pyrhus, a man from the city of Berea
  • "Aristarchus": One of Paul's travel companions, a Macedonian from Thessalonica who is known from some references in the Acts of the Apostles and Colossians 4:10.
  • "Timotheus" or "Timothy".
  • "Tychicus": traveled with Paul on his third missionary journey.
  • Tychicus and Trophimus are called ασιανοι, that is, natives of the Roman province of Asia. Making it still more definite, Trophimus is also termed an "Ephesian" and a "Gentile/Greek" in Acts 21.

    In Troas (verses 7–12)

The believers in Troas had a "meeting" on the first day of the week, which started on Saturday night, perhaps after work for some people, including Eutychus, which is a common slave name. It comprised a long teaching session by Paul, 'breaking of bread' and a communal meal, then finished at dawn.

Verse 9

Eutychus was a young man of Troas tended to by St. Paul. The name Eutychus means "fortunate". Eutychus fell asleep due to the long nature of the discourse Paul was giving and fell from his seat out of a three-story window. Paul's immediate action to resurrect Eutychus recalls the miracles of Elijah and Elisha. The term "dead" is used to emphasize that this is to be seen as a real miracle.
  • "Third story": this indicates a 'working-class insula or apartment block', not the atrium of a villa or town house.

    Verse 10

After Eutychus fell down to his death, Paul then picked him up, insisting that he was not dead, and carried him back upstairs; those gathered then had a meal and a long conversation which lasted until dawn. After Paul left, Eutychus was found to be alive. It is unclear whether the story intends to relate that Eutychus was killed by the fall and Paul raised him, or whether he simply seemed to be dead, with Paul ensuring that he is still alive.

Verse 12

Journey from Troas to Miletus (verses 13–17)

Paul's journey through the northern Aegean Sea is detailed in verses 13 to 16. The text states that Paul, having left Philippi after the Days of Unleavened Bread, had a desire urgently to travel to Jerusalem and needed to be there by the Day of Pentecost, even choosing to avoid returning to Ephesus and being delayed there. As there are fifty days from the Feast of Unleavened Bread to Pentecost, and five days were taken on travel from Philippi to Troas and seven days spent waiting in Troas, Paul and his party had around 38 days available for travel to Jerusalem.
Paul appears to have made the arrangements to charter a ship, but Luke and his companions began the journey from Troas and sailed around Cape Baba to Assos. Paul travelled overland from Troas to Assos and embarked there. The ship sailed southwards to Lesbos, calling at Mitylene, then passed Chios and arrived at Samos, staying at Trogyllium. They passed Ephesus and came into port at Miletus, calling for the elders of the church in Ephesus to travel to Miletus for a meeting. The elders of the church were also referred to as overseers in verse 28.
Miletus is about 40 miles south of Ephesus. The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary noted that in view of Paul's haste, more time might have been lost in calling for the elders to come from Ephesus than would have been lost if Paul had actually gone to Ephesus himself, but surmised that either his decision was made because of 'unfavorable winds and stormy weather had overtaken them' or 'he was unwilling to run the risk of detention at Ephesus by the state of the church and other causes'.

Paul's speech to the Ephesian elders (verses 18–38)

This section records the only direct speech of Paul to Christian believers in the book of Acts, thus the only passage which strictly parallels the epistles (cf. Philippians 3; 2 Timothy 3–4; Romans 15, and the autobiographical sections in 2 Corinthians 10-12.

Verse 24

Verse 28

  • "Take heed...unto yourselves": translated from the Greek phrase προσέχετε ἑαυτοῖς, ), which is peculiar to Luke's writings. Compare to ; ;.
  • "Overseers": translated from the Greek word ἐπισκόπους,, which is usually also rendered as "bishops". Both "elders" and "bishops" have been originally and apostolically synonymous, that the distinction between these offices cannot be certainly traced until the second century, nor was it established until late in that century.
  • "To feed": translated from the Greek word, ; the proper word for "tending" in relation to , "the flock", as , the "pastor", or "shepherd". A 'pastor' is 'to feed the flock'. Peter applies the titles of "Shepherd and Bishop of souls" to the Lord Jesus. Paul does not use the metaphor elsewhere, except indirectly, and in a different aspect.
  • "Which he hath purchased": translated from the Greek phrase ἣν περιεποιήσατο, hēn periepoiēsato, "which He has acquired" for His possession by His own blood and the Codex Sinaiticus, regarded as two oldest manuscripts, have Θεοῦ, as well as the Latin Vulgate and the Syriac versions. The early Church Fathers Ignatius and Tertullian use the phrase, "the blood of God," which seems to have been derived from this passage.
This verse was engraved on a papal tiara which Napoleon gave to Pope Pius VII.

Verse 35

This verse is unusual in that it records a saying of Jesus that did not come to be recorded in any of the gospels. In his homily on the Acts of the Apostles, John Chrysostom says, A similar saying is also found in the deuterocanonical book of Tobit.