Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? — Better, as connecting the two facts in the English as in the Greek, Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed? — i.e., on your conversion and baptism. We are left to conjecture what prompted the question. The most natural explanation is that St. Paul noticed in them, as they attended the meetings of the Church, a want of spiritual gifts, perhaps, also, a want of the peace and joy and brightness that showed itself in others. They presented the features of a rigorous asceticism like that of the Therapeutæ — the outward signs of repentance and mortification — but something was manifestly lacking for their spiritual completeness.
We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. — The standpoint of the disciples so exactly corresponds to that of Apollos when he arrived at Ephesus, that we may reasonably think of them as having been converted by his preaching. They must, of course, have known the Holy Spirit as a name meeting them in the Sacred Books, as given to the olden prophets, but they did not think of that Spirit as a living and pervading presence, in which they themselves might claim a share. They had been baptised with the baptism of repentance, and were leading a life of fasting, and prayers, and alms, but they had not passed on to “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Romans 14:17). It lies on the surface that they were Jewish, not Gentile, disciples.