manna?

Bible Study Blog: Acts 6

Posted by Mike Boyink

My first thought reading this passage was “hey—it’s the first church committee”..;)

Some background on the issue at hand:

The Hellenistic Jews   probably could not speak Aramaic which was the native tongue of Jews living in Israel. They probably were reared outside the land and were bilingual, speaking both Greek and their native tongues (cf. 2:5-11).

Gentile proselytes to Judaism who later became Christians were also in this group. The native Jews were also bilingual in that they spoke Aramaic and Greek (cf. 21:40). In the Jewish world tensions existed between the Grecian Jews and the Aramaic-speaking Jews; tragically these strains were brought into the church.

It would be similar to a church where there were mixtures of ethnic cultures and one or two cultures were being favored above the others.

http://www.carm.org/sermons/Acts_6_1-7.htm

So what what it looks like we have here is the first appointment of deacons, in response to an attack by Satan with the intent of trying to divide the church along cultural lines.