Acts2:44

Previous Verse Next Verse

Translation

and all who had believed were together [in]

Go to footnote number

the same [place]

Go to footnote number

and had all things shared,

Go to footnote number

Paraphrase

and all those who had believed in Jesus spent time together in one place and they considered everything as belonging to the group, not to themselves personally,

Footnotes

1

[ ] means that this word is not in the original, rather it is assumed.

2

They usually met in the temple courts, under the roof of a section of Solomon’s colonnade.

3

This is an interesting word choice. Although it can mean “shared,” it usually means something “common, mundane, unclean, defiled, not holy, not sacred.” The idea is that they considered nothing to be exclusively their own, but considered everything to belong to the group, shared. But in light of the Law’s emphasis on clean and unclean, this choice of words is surprising. It turns things a different direction than normal. Here the counterpart (holy) is something set apart for personal use by the individual, not special use by or for God. Because of this twist, in this instance “set apart as something special” is bad because it is special only to the individual, and “common” is good because it opens up access to all.