Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Acts 8:26-40, The Ethiopian official
On the desert road to Gaza, Philip meets a eunuch who serves the queen of the Ethiopians, reading Isaiah in his chariot on the way home from worship in Jerusalem, and baptizes him.
Acts 8:26-40, in every translation this tool compares.
Directed by an angel, Philip goes to a desert road toward Gaza and meets a eunuch who manages the royal treasury of the Ethiopian queen. The official, going home after worshiping in Jerusalem, is reading the Isaiah passage about the suffering servant and wants to know who it describes. Philip starts there and explains Jesus, and when they reach water the man asks for baptism and receives it. Philip is then taken away by the Spirit, and the official goes home full of joy, carrying the message south into Africa.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/proselytes-and-god-fearers\/","n":"Converts and God-fearers","s":"Gentiles drawn to Israel's God stood at two distances. Converts took on the whole law, circumcision included, and became Jews. God-fearers worshiped Israel's God, gave to the synagogue and kept some customs, but did not convert.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/temple-and-courts\/","n":"The temple and its courts","s":"Herod's huge rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, believed to be God's dwelling, laid out in courts that kept Gentiles, women and Jewish men at set distances.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/babel-and-the-nations\/","n":"Babel and the seventy nations","s":"Genesis 10 lists the nations of the world, seventy in the Hebrew text and seventy-two in the Greek. Jewish tradition counted the nations that way, and Deuteronomy 32 tells how God divided them and kept Israel as his own. Luke's list of nations at Pentecost recalls them.","r":""}
Ethiopia meant all of Africa south of Egypt, and the kingdom meant is Meroë in Nubia, not Axum in today's Ethiopia; Rome, unable to conquer it, made a treaty, and most of Rome's trade with Africa farther south passed through it, so its treasurer handled great wealth (the cultural backgrounds article The African Empire of Meroë; Keener). The CSB Study Bible says Candace "was not the queen's name but a title"; the article adds that Greeks applied it to the ruling queen mother, while Africans probably used it more widely, and names Nawidemak as one queen who reigned then, while the Zondervan Bible dictionary thinks this one probably Amantitere, about AD 25-41. Only the wealthy owned a chariot or a personal scroll of Isaiah (Keener and his notes). Men who served queens were often eunuchs, and Deuteronomy 23:1 barred them from the assembly (the cultural backgrounds notes), yet Isaiah 56:3-5 promised them a place among God's people (Keener). Whether he was a eunuch in the literal sense is open: the Greek Old Testament sometimes uses the word for any court official (Keener), though the cultural backgrounds notes argue that the repeated use points to a true eunuch.
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article The African Empire of Meroë, and notes on Acts 8:27, 8:28, 8:30 and 8:36
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Acts 8:26, 8:27, 8:28 and 8:29-30
- CSB Study Bible, note on Acts 8:26-29
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entry Candace
