Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary: Acts
Chapter 17
Ver. 2. It was customary with St. Paul to open the Scriptures first to the Jews, (Acts xiii. 46.) and to argue with them from the law and the prophets. (Acts xxviii. 23.) St. Paul made use of the same passages of Scripture to convince the Jews, as Jesus Christ did on a similar occasion. (Mat. Polus.)
Ver. 3. That the Christ was to suffer. The suffering of Christ was the great stumbling-block to the Jews, which St. Paul now attempted to remove, by shewing them from the Scripture, that this was one of the necessary characters of the Messias, contained in the prophets. All the other marks were likewise accomplished in Christ. (Denis the Carthusian) --- And that this is Jesus Christ, whom I preach to you. The transition from an oblique to a direct mode of speech is very common, especially in the holy Scriptures.
Ver. 4. And some of them, that is, of the Jews, in whose synagogue he preached, believed, and of those that[1] worshipped God, that is, of those who adored the only true God, though they had not submitted themselves to circumcision, and to the ceremonies of the Jewish law, and of the Gentiles, that is, of such as till that time had been heathens, and idolaters; so that here three sorts of persons were converted by St. Paul: 1. Jews; 2. worshippers of the true God that were not Jews; and 3. Gentiles. In this book of the Acts, mention is several times made of worshippers, to wit, of God, by which many understand Jewish proselytes: but as they neither were Jews already, nor perhaps ever designed to become Jews, we may distinguish two sorts of the Jewish proselytes. Some were proselytes to the Jewish religion, by a submission to circumcision, and to all the precepts and ceremonies of the Mosaic laws. These are also by some called proselytes of the covenant, being as much Jews as they who had been always so. Others are called proselytes of the gate, or proselytes to the God of the Jews, but not to the religion of the Jews. Of such seems to have been Cornelius, the centurion, (Acts x.) Lydia, (Acts xvi. 14.) and Titus Justus (Acts xviii. 7.) Such also seems to have been the eunuch of Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, (Acts viii.) Naaman, the Syrian, after he was cured of his leprosy, (4 Kings v. 17.) and many others, that lived in Judea, and in other countries. These, therefore, are called worshippers, meaning of the true God, though they embraced not the legal precepts and ceremonies of the Jews. See Monsr. Heure's Dictionary. (Witham)
Ver. 6. Who disturb the city,[2] put it in an uproar. In the ordinary Greek copies, for the city, we read the whole world. (Witham)
Ver. 7. Another king. These Jews suppress, with great artifice, their true cause of vexation against the apostles, and change a mere question of religion into one of temporal policy. The accusation of raising up a new power in opposition to Cæsar's, had been sufficiently refuted and disavowed before Pilate by the author of our religion, and was therefore too gross to be repeated now. My kingdom, says our blessed Saviour, is not of this world. There is no necessary connection between spiritual and temporal power. It is thus that the abettors of persecution are never at a loss for pretexts, when necessary. Mad zeal is not scrupulously nice in the choice of arguments. (Haydock)
Ver. 10. Synagogue. In flying from the face of persecution in due season, St. Paul imitated the instruction and example of his master. When his labours are unsuccessful in one place, he renews them in another, and wherever he is, his object is always the same, to announce the truth to the Jews first, then to the Gentiles. (Denis the Carthusian)
Ver. 11. These were more noble than those of Thessalonica. According to the common exposition, the sense is, that these of Berœa, were of a more noble and generous disposition of mind, not carried away with envy and malice, like those of Thessalonica. --- Searching the Scriptures, or those places of the prophets by which St. Paul proved that Jesus was the Messias, who was to suffer death, &c. (Witham) --- Daily searching the Scriptures, &c. The sheep are not hereby made judges of their pastors, the people of the priests, and lay men and women of St. Paul's doctrine. The Berœans did not read the Old Testament (and the New was not then published) to dispute with the apostles, or to sanction his doctrines: but it was a great comfort and confirmation to the Jews that had the Scriptures, to find, even as St. Paul said, that Christ was God, crucified, risen, and ascended to heaven; which by his expounding they understood, and never before, though they read them, and heard them read every sabbath. So it is a great comfort to a Catholic to see in the Scriptures the clear passages that prove the truth of his tenets, and shew the grounds for his hopes. But this by no means authorizes him to be judge of the true pastors of the Church, whom he is commanded by Jesus Christ to hear and obey, and from whom they are to learn the genuine sense of the Scriptures.
Ver. 16. Lactanius ridicules the folly of idolatry in a neat strain of irony, which he introduces by the following verses from Lucilius:
Ut pueri infantes credunt signa omnia ahena
Vivere et esse homines; sic isti omnia ficta
Vera putant, &c.
--- The poet compares these fools to children. I think them worse; for the latter only take the statues for men, they for gods. Age causes the error of the one, folly of the other. These soon cease to be deceived, but the folly of those lasts and increases always. (Lactanius, de fals. Relig. lib. i.)
Ver. 18. Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. The former of these philosophers held as their doctrine, that the Almighty did not interfere by his providence in the government of the world; that the soul did not subsist after the body; and consequently, that there was no future state of retribution. The latter denied that man had liberty of action, and maintained, that all things happened by destiny and fatal necessity. These were the two opposite sects St. Paul had to contend with. (Calmet) --- The Stoics believed in the immortality of the soul, and came the nearest to the Christian religion: but both Stoics and Epicureans, with all pagan philosophers, denied the resurrection of bodies; hence St. Augustine says, the faith of a resurrection is peculiar to Christians. (Estius) --- What is it that this babbler[3] would say? A word of contempt, which some translate, this prattler. It is thought to be a metaphor from birds picking up little seeds, or the like, for their food; and to signify, that St. Paul had picked up words and sentences without any solid meaning. (Witham)