John Kilgallen, «Hostility to Paul in Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13,45) — Why?», Vol. 84 (2003) 1-15

Throughout Acts 13–14 Luke brings to the reader’s knowledge opponents of Paul who are called " the Jews" . The present essay attempts to clarify the meaning of this short-hand identification of Paul’s Jewish opponents. It seems best to understand these particular Jews in the light of zealotry which has its roots in centuries of vigorous defense of Jewish religious convictions.

        Moreover, not only is he qualified to give every generation what David himself cannot give because he has corrupted, as though resurrection from the dead is all that is needed to bestow upon Israel the ‘holy and sure blessings’; he is preeminently qualified, as the Scriptures indicate, because Jesus is My Son, he is the Holy One, the Savior, profoundly and uniquely²⁷ qualified to bestow on Israel the holy blessings entrusted for her to David²⁸.

        Yes, the discourse is a very Jewish, ‘in-house’ homily, both in its thoughts about God’s goodness to Israel and in its manner of offering assurance and conviction, consolation and exhortation²⁹ to belief in Jesus.

        2. On the other hand, there is, amidst all this ‘jewishness’, an opening to others. At the conclusion to the homily, Paul proclaims that the one who will be justified in ‘him’ will be pa=j o( pisteu/wn (v. 39). One can rightly point out that the extension of the adjective pa=j includes all Jews and Godfearers, especially those who hear Paul’s homily this day.

        Yet, as elsewhere in Luke’s writing, the inclusive sense of pa=j (and its equivalents) embraces more than persons than one might immediately expect; in this way, the ‘all’ or ‘every’ carries a proleptic sense, to be explicitated later in the Lucan story. Consider, for instance, the citation Luke uses to explain the activity of John the Baptist, a citation he consciously lengthens (over Mark) to include this final phrase: kai_ o!yetai pa=sa sa_rc to_ swth/rion tou= Qeou= (Luke 3,6). An appropriate, but early understanding of this phrase is that all Israel will see the salvation of God. Yet, one sees in the phrase the reality that will unfold, as, going beyond the world of John, God will let ‘all beings’ see the salvation which is Jesus.