Discovery BoxActs 17:10-12
Context17:10 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.
[17:10] 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.
[17:10] 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.
[17:10] 3 sn See the note on synagogue in 6:9.
[17:11] 4 tn Grk “These”; the referent (the Jews in the synagogue at Berea) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[17:11] 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.
[17:11] 6 sn Thessalonica was a city in Macedonia (modern Salonica).
[17:11] 7 tn Or “willingly,” “readily”; Grk “with all eagerness.”
[17:11] 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.
[17:11] 9 tn This verb (BDAG 66 s.v. ἀνακρίνω 1) refers to careful examination.
[17:11] 10 tn BDAG 437 s.v. ἡμέρα 2.c has “every day” for this phrase in this verse.
[17:12] 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).
