Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 2:11

"Cretans and Arabians, we hear them speaking in our tongues the mighty works of God." — Acts 2:11 (ASV)

Why these fifteen countries and no others are named here and why they are cited in this order are questions without ready solutions. Presumably Luke is using a current literary convention to illustrate his more prosaic statement of v.5: “from every nation under heaven.” The list includes both ancient kingdoms and current political entities, moving generally from east to west and in its middle section naming first the northern and then the southern lands. The appearance of “Judea” in the listing is, admittedly, strange because (1) it hardly ranks being sandwiched between Mesopotamia to the east and Cappadocia to the north; and (2) it involves the curious anomaly of inhabitants of Judea being amazed to hear the apostles speak in their own language. Perhaps the most cogent solution involves viewing “Judea” here in a wider prophetic sense, wherein the reference is to “the land of the Jews” that was held to stretch from the Euphrates to the Egyptian border. This would explain its sequence in the list and the omission of Syria from the list, and it would allow for a variety of dialects different from the one that was native to Jerusalem. The inclusion of “Cretans and Arabs” probably refers to seafaring peoples and to Nabatean Arabs, whose kingdom traditionally extended from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. Each area and country named had a considerable Jewish population within its borders. Some of these had returned to Jerusalem to take up residence there. One group, however, is singled out as being religious pilgrims to the city: Jews and proselytes to Judaism from Rome. Undoubtedly there were other festival pilgrims in the crowd (just as there must have been other Diaspora Jews in attendance who were residents of Jerusalem), but Luke’s interest in Acts is in the Gospel reaching out even to Rome, the capital of the empire. So he singles out this pilgrim contingent for special mention. It may be that some of these “visitors” from Rome returned there and formed the nucleus of the church in that city.