J.J. Blunt's Undesigned Scriptural Coincidences
AN ARGUMENT FOR THE VERACITY OF THE HOLY BIBLE
Introduction
Part One:
The Books of Moses
Part Two:
The Historical Scriptures
Part Three:
The Prophetical Scripture
Part Four:
The Gospels and Acts
Appendix:
The Gospels, Acts
and Josephus

XXXVIII. THE CHRISTIANS OF ANTIOCH

Acts 11:26.—“And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.”

The mention of this fact as a remarkable one, and worthy of being recorded, is natural, and coincides with the circumstances of the case as gathered from other passages of the Acts. For it should seem, from the various phrases and circumlocutions resorted to in that book, by which to express Christians and Christianity, that for a long time no very distinctive term was applied to either. We read of “all that believed” (oi pisteuonteV, ii. 44); of “the disciples” (oimaqhtai, vi. 1); of “any of this way” (oi thV odou, ix. 2); and again, of “the way of God” (h tou Qeou odoV, xviii. 26); or simply of “that way” (h odoV, xix. 9); or of “this way” (auth h odoV, xxii. 4). Indeed, the name Christian occurs but in two other places in the New Testament. (Acts 26:28; 1 Pet. 4:16.) A title therefore which characterized the new sect succinctly and in a word, and which saved so much inconvenient and ambiguous periphrasis, was memorable; and, even if given in the first instance as a reproach, was sure to be soon adopted and rendered familiar. On the supposition that the book of the Acts of the Apostles was a fiction, is it possible to imagine that this unobtrusive evidence of the progress of a name would have been found in it [My attention was drawn to this coincidence by a passage in Bishop Pearson. Minor Theolog. Works, i.p. 367.] ?