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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Luke 2:46 - 2:46
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
46. μετὰ ἡμέρας τρεῖς. This, in the Jewish idiom, probably means ‘on the third day.’ One day was occupied by the journey to Beeroth; on the second, they sought Him in the caravans and at Jerusalem; the next day they found Him in the Temple. The unsettled state of the country would add to their alarm.
ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ. Probably in one of the numerous chambers which ran round the Court, and abutted on the actual building; or in one of the three Temple-synagogues of which the Talmud speaks.
καθεζόμενον. Doubtless at the feet of the Rabbis, as was the custom of Jewish boys when sitting began to be permitted.
ἐν μέσῳ τῶν διδασκάλων, ‘in the midst of the teachers.’ The most eminent Rabbis of this period—some of whom may have been present as youths, and some as aged men—were Hillel, his rival Shammai, and his son Rabban Shimeon, Bava ben Butah, Nicodemus, Jochanan ben Zakkai.
ἀκούοντα αὐτῶν καὶ ἐπερωτῶντα αὐτούς. Obviously with all modest humility. The Apocryphal Gospels characteristically degrade this scene, and represent the boy Christ as behaving with a forwardness which most flagrantly contradicts the whole tenor of the narrative, and would have been specially displeasing to Jewish elders (Pirke Avôth, v. 12. 15). Such inventions, which are only too common in all commentators, from the days of the Fathers downward, spring from an irreverent reverence which has its real root in Apollinarianism.