Acts 2:41 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

There were added unto them about three thousand souls.— The phrase Προσετεθησαν, rendered there were added, emphatically signifies, "to pass over to a body of men;" and implies that these persons renounced their former religious profession, and embraced that of the apostles. Some render it, There came over, or acceded. Elsner, in his note on this place, has shewn, that souls often signifies persons in the Greek and Latin classics. It is commonly said, that the three thousand mentioned in the text, were converted by one sermon. But, it is probable, that, while St. Peter was preaching in the Syriac language, the other apostles were preaching at some small distance, much to the same purpose, in other languages; and it is not to be imagined that none of them but St. Peter should be blessed on that day, as the means of converting souls; not to insist upon it, that he himself might deliver several discourses this day to different audiences, when the concourse of people was so great, and their languages so various. The late sufferings of our Lord, the present miracle of languages, and the authority of the speakers, greatly contributed to this numerousconversion:butallwouldhavebeenutterlyunavailablewithouttheefficacy of the Holy Spirit. This numerous conversion not only confirmed the truth of the apostles, in laying claim to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, but likewise served as a proof to them of the reality of it, and as an encouragement to undertake that office, for which it qualified them. With these credentials from Heaven, even a poor fisherman of Galilee might appear with dignity before the high-priest and sanhedrim of the Jews; asserting boldly, that God had made that Jesus, whom they had crucified, both Lord and Christ, and making good this assertion by proving that he was risen from the dead,—strange and supernatural as it might seem,—not only by his own testimony, and that of his brethren, the apostles and disciples of Jesus, by whom he was seen forty days after his passion; but by innumerable instances of a power in like manner superior to nature, derived upon them from him, and exercised bythem in his name. From the scriptures also might the same ignorant Galilean show, against the traditions of the elders, and learning of the scribes, and the prejudices of the whole Jewish nation, that the humble suffering Jesus, was the mighty, triumphant Messiah, spoken of by the prophets; since if, with a reference to the interpretation of those prophesies, any doubt could have arisen among the people, to whose expositions they should submit,—to those of the scribes and elders, or those of the apostles,—the latter had to produce, in support of their authority, the attestation of the Spirit, by whom those prophets were inspired, now speaking through their mouths in all the languages of the earth. And, with regard to that other point, of infinitely harder digestion to the Jews, namely, the calling of the uncircumcised Gentiles to an equal participation of the kingdom of God, and consequently the abolishing of circumcision, and the whole ceremonial law;—the apostles were furnished with an argument to which all the rabbies were not able to reply, by the Holy Ghost bestowing upon the Gentile converts to Christianity, the same heavenly gifts as he had conferred at the beginning upon the believing Jews.