Acts 11:29-30 The Earliest Christian Elders
The following is an excerpt from a study Jacob has been working on over the last 2 years about the New Testament Elder.
In Acts 11:29-30 (narrative, descriptive) we’re given the first explicit mention of New Testament Christian elders:
Acts 11:29 The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea. 30 This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.
Prior to Acts 11:30 the term for elders is used as a reference to Jewish elders, not members of the believing community following in faith the resurrected Jesus (1). The elders mentioned in Acts 11:30 by definition are Christian as the relief sent from Antioch was intended for “brothers and sisters living in Judea” (Acts 11:29). While there weren’t clearly defined distinctions between Jews and Christians by the Roman authorities until the reign of Nero, there was early on, within the first days after Jesus’ resurrection a clear distinction made between the followers of Jesus and the established Jewish religious community. The complaints regarding Christian preaching and teaching early in the book of Acts came from Jewish religious authorities. Clearly, there was enough distinction for Christians as the community of faith began to grow as soon as the ascension of Jesus (Acts 1) and the further development of organizational structures post-Pentecost emerged (2).
The passage makes clear that there were elders in place in Judea prior to the famine in Acts 11:27-30 as 11:30 makes clear it is the elders in Judea who were to receive the contribution sent by the Christians of Antioch (3). This means within the first 15 years of the New Testament church, elders had emerged as an authority body with at minimum the responsibility to receive financial contributions made by other believers.
It is plausible that elders were not mentioned earlier in Acts due to never having an explicit starting point. While the office of deacon has a clear proto-type or genesis narrative (see footnote #2) the office of Christian elder may have inherited much of the role from Jewish understanding.
What can we say definitively from Acts 11:29-30 regarding the timeline of elders?
We can say biblically that without a doubt elders existed in Judea prior to the events of 11:29-30. Eldership within the community of faith is a thoroughly Christian idea, and was an early, integral aspect of the church.
We can also affirm that from the earliest years of the Christian community elders exercised a level of responsibility related to finances.
Lastly, we can say that elders exercised their office for the benefit of the community.
Footnotes:
(1) The following occurrences of elder in Acts all refer to Jewish eldership: 4:5, 4:8, 4:23, 5:21, and 6:12. While it is difficult from these texts to nail down an exact date when the New Testament church established elders, it must have been prior to Acts 11:30.
(2) Acts 6:1-7 with the inauguration of prototype deacons.
(3) According to Dr. Robert R. Hann, the broadly accepted chronology of dates, puts Paul in Antioch in the late 30s (within 5-10 years of the resurrection of Jesus). See Hann’s work “Judaism and Jewish Christianity in Antioch: Charisma and Conflict in the First Century” footnote #3 for a detailed timeline.
