In the first five chapters of Acts, Luke presents snapshots of the early Jerusalem believers’ way of life in three short summaries: Acts 2.42–7, 4.32–5 and 5.12–16. The last verse of the first summary, 2.47, depicts the joy and popularity that the community enjoyed, as they were ‘praising God and having the goodwill of all the people’ (ἔχοντες χάριν πρὸς ὅλον τὸν λαόν).Footnote ¹ Most translations render ἔχοντες χάριν πρὸς ὅλον τὸν λαόν in a similar way, understanding the community to be the recipients of the people's favour.Footnote ² Over the past few decades, however, the arguments in T. David Andersen's NTS article ‘The Meaning of ΕΧΟΝΤΕΣ ΧΑΡΙΝ ΠΡΟΣ in Acts 2,47’ have led several authors to suggest that it is actually the people who are the recipients of the community's favour and not the other way around.Footnote ³ While the context seems to support the standard translation, Andersen asserts that the linguistic evidence points towards the people-as-recipients interpretation, resulting in a tension between context and grammar.Footnote ⁴ In this short study, I argue that Andersen's data are weaker than they initially appear, and I present information overlooked by Andersen that strongly supports the community-as-recipients reading of this verse. There is, therefore, no tension between the contextual and the grammatical evidence, and the traditional translation may be confidently affirmed.

In his 1988 article, Andersen presents the community-as-recipients interpretation as the position of ‘the vast majority of commentators’.Footnote ⁵ It has continued to enjoy considerable support, and, as Andersen himself notes, ‘the strongest argument in favour of the traditional interpretation is that it fits the context’.Footnote ⁶ This is the case with respect to both the immediate and the broader context of Acts 2.47. Immediately, a statement that the community had ‘the goodwill of all the people’ in v. 47a paves the way for v. 47b, which asserts that ‘day by day the Lord added to their number’. More broadly, a claim regarding the community's popularity with outsiders fits well with several similar comments in the early chapters of Acts (4.21; 5.13–16, 26).

Andersen's article takes up a position defended earlier by F. P. Cheetham and Giuseppe Gamba and expands it by considering parallel uses of the χάρις πρός construction in Philo and Josephus.Footnote ⁷ Cheetham and Andersen employ a similar set of arguments for the people-as-recipients reading:

1. (1) The context fits with both interpretations ‘equally well’.Footnote ⁸

2. (2) Evidence from the NT (Cheetham) and Philo and Josephus (Andersen) indicates that the object of πρός is typically the recipient of favour.Footnote ⁹

3. (3) Counter-examples cited by the LSJ do not involve the word χάρις and are too early to be relevant.Footnote ¹⁰

Pointing to Cheetham's and Andersen's articles, Daniel Marguerat adopts the view that Acts 2.47 describes the Jerusalem believers showing favour towards the people, as do Mikeal Parsons and the authors of some recent essays and monographs on Acts.Footnote ¹¹ The BDAG also indicates support for this reading, citing Cheetham in its entry for ‘πρός’ and Andersen under ‘χάρις’.Footnote ¹² Other commentators, such as Richard Pervo, Rudolf Pesch and David Peterson, cite one or more of these articles while expressing uncertainty as to the correct interpretation, seeing a tension between the meanings favoured by grammar and context respectively.Footnote ¹³ At the present, therefore, commentaries on Acts express a range of opinions as to the correct reading of Acts 2.47, and the arguments of Cheetham and Andersen have played a significant role in effecting this disagreement.

All of these arguments overstate the evidence, however. Andersen is correct in stating that the context does not ‘rule out’ the people-as-recipients interpretation, but claiming that the context fits both readings ‘equally well’ underestimates the support that the comparable claims of the people's admiration for the believers elsewhere in Acts 1–5 offer for the traditional interpretation.Footnote ¹⁴ The fact that the third summary, Acts 5.12–16, contains one of these expressions (‘the people esteemed them’, 5.13) is even weightier evidence, given the high concentration of shared themes among the three summaries.Footnote ¹⁵

Turning to linguistic arguments, the construction χάρις πρός + acc. does not occur elsewhere in the NT or LXX, and Cheetham and Andersen take different tacks in trying to establish the range of plausible meanings in Acts 2.47. Cheetham argues that the community-as-recipients reading would have to understand πρός + acc. in the ablative sense, as meaning ‘from’, and that πρός + acc. never signifies this in the NT.Footnote ¹⁶ Yet Luke twice marks the source of χάρις not with an ablative prepositional phrase (e.g. παρά + gen.) but rather with παρά + dat., a locative expression: ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God’ (εὗρες … χάριν παρὰ τῷ θεῷ, Luke 1.30); ‘Jesus advanced [in] wisdom and age and favour before God and man’ (προέκοπτεν [ἐν τῇ] … χάριτι παρὰ θεῷ καὶ ἀνθρώποις, Luke 2.52).Footnote ¹⁷ Further, in the NT πρός + acc. often has a locative, static meaning and can thus stand in for παρά + dat. in the sense of ‘with’ or ‘before’.Footnote ¹⁸ Interpreting ἔχοντες χάριν πρὸς ὅλον τὸν λαόν as ‘having favour with all the people’ is therefore consonant with the NT usage of πρός + acc.

Examining instances of the particular expression χάρις πρός + acc. would be more helpful, and this is the approach that Andersen takes, reviewing the nine uses of this construction in Philo and Josephus. Andersen reports that the results are unanimous: ‘in every case the object of πρός is the person towards whom χάρις is directed’.Footnote ¹⁹ This is the heart of Andersen's argument, the evidence that ‘decisively supports the interpretation that πρός + accusative designates the recipient of χάρις’.Footnote ²⁰ The data from Philo and Josephus are, however, much more ambiguous than Andersen asserts. First, two of the instances of χάρις πρός in Josephus describe situations of reciprocal favour: in Ant. 14, he records the Jewish envoys’ request for a renewal of ‘goodwill and friendship … with the Romans’ (πρὸς Ῥωμαίους χάριτας καὶ τὴν φιλίαν, 14.146 (trans. Marcus and Wikgren)) and the Romans’ agreement to a relationship of ‘goodwill and friendship with them’ (φιλίαν καὶ χάριτας πρὸς αὐτούς, 14.148 (trans. Marcus and Wikgren)). This is clearly an establishment of reciprocal favour, and thus in these cases the object of πρός denotes the giver of χάρις no less than it does the recipient.

Two other instances of χάρις πρός in Josephus and Philo may actually describe situations in which the object of πρός is not the recipient but rather the giver of favour. Andersen cites Thackeray's translation of Ant. 6.86, in which Samuel denies that he has ‘done anything sinister and unjust through love of lucre or cupidity or out of favour to others’ (ἢ κέρδους ἕνεκα ἢ πλεονεξίας ἢ χάριτος τῆς πρὸς ἄλλους). But this is not a contextually obvious translation; Samuel could easily be denying that he ever committed injustice in order to win favour from others. As it happens, this is the way in which Christopher Begg understands this passage in his recent translation: ‘whether I have done anything bad or unjust or for the sake of gain or covetousness or [to win] favor with others’.Footnote ²¹ The direction of favour here is thus unclear; this text cannot serve as positive evidence for Andersen's interpretation. Another case cited by Andersen almost certainly depicts the object of πρός as the giver rather than the recipient of favour. In Conf. 116, Philo advises the wicked to keep their misdeeds hidden, ‘whether to keep the goodwill of the more decent sort (χάριτος ἕνεκα τῆς πρὸς τοὺς ἐπιεικεστέρους), or to escape the punishments which wait on open sins’ (trans. Colson and Whitaker). Here it is reasonably clear that the motivation for concealing one's wickedness is to preserve the favourable impression held by others.Footnote ²²

The linguistic evidence from the NT, Philo and Josephus, therefore, does not uniformly point towards a people-as-recipients interpretation of Acts 2.47. In addition, the last example from Philo supplies the first-century evidence for the use of χάρις πρός + acc. in the sense of ‘[to have] favour with’ that Cheetham and Andersen found lacking in the LSJ. Nevertheless, none of the examples cited employ the verb ἔχειν; more exact parallels to the construction in Acts 2.47, ἔχειν χάριν πρός + acc., would certainly aid in establishing the correct translation of this verse. Neither Cheetham nor Andersen present such a parallel, but at least three are extant.

The most relevant instance is found in Plutarch's Demosthenes. Recounting the orator's early frustrations, Plutarch remarks that Demosthenes ‘had no favour with the people (χάριν οὐκ ἔχει πρὸς τὸν δῆμον), but debauchees, sailors, and illiterate fellows were listened to and held the bema, while he himself was ignored’ (Dem. 7.2; trans. Perrin). This is the closest extant analogue to the Greek construction in Acts 2.47, and it comes from a contemporary of Luke.Footnote ²³ Furthermore, translators are unanimous in understanding the accusative object of πρός, ‘the people’, to be the ones (potentially) giving rather than receiving favour in Dem. 7.2.Footnote ²⁴

Two other instances of the ἔχειν χάριν πρός + acc. construction provide supplementary evidence for the same conclusion. Both occur in the Greek magical text known as the Cyranides, compiled somewhere between the first and the fourth century ce.Footnote ²⁵ The first is in the description of the effects of wearing a stone engraved with images of Dionysus and a bird: ‘You will not be drunk, and you will find favour with everyone (πρὸς πάντας χάριν ἔχων). And you will be free from danger and unbeatable in court’ (1.8.27–8).Footnote ²⁶ Tying a vulture's heart bound in wolfskin to one's arm also produces positive results: ‘Every demon will flee the one who bears it, as will bandits and wild beasts. He will find favour with all men and with all women (ἕξει δὲ χάριν πρὸς πάντας ἀνθρώπους καὶ πᾶσας γυναῖκας), and he will live in ease’ (3.9.14–16).Footnote ²⁷ In both cases, the desired effect clearly is finding favour in the eyes of others rather than showing favour to others.

These three passages from Plutarch and the Cyranides are the closest parallels to the Greek construction found in Acts 2.47, showing the same ἔχειν χάριν πρός + acc. construction. In all three cases, the object of πρός is the person or persons giving rather than receiving favour. The standard meaning for the expression ἔχειν χάριν πρός + acc. thus seems to be ‘to find favour with’. This finding resolves the tension that some have seen between the interpretations of Acts 2.47 suggested by context and syntax respectively. Both the context and the syntax of Acts 2.47 indicate that ἔχοντες χάριν πρὸς ὅλον τὸν λαόν should be understood as stating that the Jerusalem believers found favour with the people. Previous arguments against this interpretation have misrepresented the evidence from Philo and Josephus and have failed to take the most relevant comparative material into account.