17:10 The brothers sent Paul and Silas off to Berea 1 at once, during the night. When they arrived, 2 they went to the Jewish synagogue. 3 17:11 These Jews 4 were more open-minded 5 than those in Thessalonica, 6 for they eagerly 7 received 8 the message, examining 9 the scriptures carefully every day 10 to see if these things were so. 17:12 Therefore many of them believed, along with quite a few 11 prominent 12 Greek women and men.
1 sn Berea (alternate spelling in NRSV Beroea; Greek Beroia) was a very old city in Macedonia on the river Astraeus about 45 mi (75 km) west of Thessalonica.
2 tn Grk “who arriving there, went to.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, the relative pronoun (οἵτινες, Joitine") has been left untranslated and a new English sentence begun. The participle παραγενόμενοι (paragenomenoi) has been taken temporally.
3 sn See the note on synagogue in 6:9.
4 tn Grk “These”; the referent (the Jews in the synagogue at Berea) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
5 tn Or “more willing to learn.” L&N 27.48 and BDAG 404 s.v. εὐγενής 2 both use the term “open-minded” here. The point is that they were more receptive to Paul’s message.
6 sn Thessalonica was a city in Macedonia (modern Salonica).
7 tn Or “willingly,” “readily”; Grk “with all eagerness.”
8 tn Grk “who received.” Here the relative pronoun (“who”) has been translated as a pronoun (“they”) preceded by a semicolon, which is less awkward in contemporary English than a relative clause at this point.
9 tn This verb (BDAG 66 s.v. ἀνακρίνω 1) refers to careful examination.
10 tn BDAG 437 s.v. ἡμέρα 2.c has “every day” for this phrase in this verse.
11 tn Grk “not a few”; this use of negation could be misleading to the modern English reader, however, and so has been translated as “quite a few” (which is the actual meaning of the expression).
12 tn Or “respected.”