For an Informed Love of God
Bill Mounce
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Monday, June 7, 2021
Can Cornelius and Luke tell Time? (Acts 10:30)
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“Cornelius said, ‘Four days ago at this hour, I was praying at the ninth hour in my house, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing.’” The challenge here is that it was only three days earlier that Cornelius had his vision. So is this an error?
First of all, it seems highly unlikely that Luke, a trained physician, can’t count, or that he made a silly math error that would have been caught when proofreading. There must be an explanation. And there is.
The answer is the different way in which people count days. When I travel, my wife Robin wil talk about how many days I will be gone. If I leave on a Saturday and return on the next Friday, how many days will I be gone? I say 7 days. Robin says 5 days; she doesn’t count the days she will see me, namely Saturday and Friday.
What’s happening in Acts 10:30 is that Cornelius is counting the day he saw the vision as one day. We tend not to do that.
| Cornelius | Us | |
| Vision | Day 1 | — |
| Friends come to Caesarea | Day 2 | Day 1 |
| Travel to Caesarea | Day 3 | Day 2 |
| Meet with Cornelius | Day 4 | Day 3 |
So this is not an error but an alternate way of counting days.
This blog is an extract from my upcoming book, Why I Trust the Bible, due out in August, 2021).
Bill is the founder and President of BiblicalTraining.org, serves on the Committee for Bible Translation (which is responsible for the NIV translation of the Bible), was the New Testament Chair for the ESV, and has written the best-selling biblical Greek textbook, Basics of Biblical Greek, and many other Greek resources. He blogs regularly on Greek and issues of spiritual growth.