Acts 3:20-22
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
20 and that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment and send you the Messiah already appointed for you, Jesus,[a] 21 whom heaven must receive until the times of universal restoration[b] of which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old. 22 For Moses said:[c]
‘A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you
from among your own kinsmen;
to him you shall listen in all that he may say to you.(A)
Footnotes
- 3:20 The Lord…and send you the Messiah already appointed for you, Jesus: an allusion to the parousia or second coming of Christ, judged to be imminent in the apostolic age. This reference to its nearness is the only explicit one in Acts. Some scholars believe that this verse preserves a very early christology, in which the title “Messiah” (Greek “Christ”) is applied to him as of his parousia, his second coming (contrast Acts 2:36). This view of a future messiahship of Jesus is not found elsewhere in the New Testament.
- 3:21 The times of universal restoration: like “the times of refreshment” (Acts 3:20), an apocalyptic designation of the messianic age, fitting in with the christology of Acts 3:20 that associates the messiahship of Jesus with his future coming.
- 3:22 A loose citation of Dt 18:15, which teaches that the Israelites are to learn the will of Yahweh from no one but their prophets. At the time of Jesus, some Jews expected a unique prophet to come in fulfillment of this text. Early Christianity applied this tradition and text to Jesus and used them especially in defense of the divergence of Christian teaching from traditional Judaism.
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