the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Dictionaries
Eutychus
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (Εὔτυχος)
A young man who listened to St. Paul. preaching at Troas on his final journey to Jerusalem (Acts 20:7-12). As the Apostle was leaving the next day, he continued his speech till midnight, evidently in a crowded and overheated upper room where many torches were burning. Eutychus, who was sealed at the window, fell asleep, and, falling down from the third story, was ‘taken up dead ‘(ἤρθη νεκρός). The narrative states that St. Paul went down, embraced the lad, and told the company not to trouble themselves as life was still in him. Then he went upstairs, broke bread, and continued speaking till morning. As they were departing Eutychus was brought to them alive.
Various theories have been put forward to explain or explain away this incident. Some suppose that the youth was only stunned by his fall, and appeared to the spectators to be dead; others that the whole story is unhistorical, and merely intended as a parallel to the narrative of St. Peter’s raising of Dorcas (Acts 9:36-43), But the narrative leaves little doubt of the intention of the historian to relate a miracle. As Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveler, p. 291) points out, the passage belongs to the ‘we’ sections of Acts, and Luke, as a medical man, uses precise medical terms, and as an eyewitness certainly means to state that Eutychus it as really dead. The words ἤρθη νεκρός can only bear that significance, otherwise we should have, as in Mark 9:26, ὡσεὶ νεκρός, ‘as one dead.’ There is no doubt that the incident is related as an instance of the power of the Apostle to work miracles, and that the historian believed him to have done so on this occasion.
Literature.-W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, 1895. p. 290; E. Zeller, Acts, Eng. translation , 1875-76, ii. p. 62; H. J. Holtzmann, Hand-Kommentar2 ‘Die Apostelgesch.,’ 1892, p. 402; R. J. Knowling, Expositor’s Greek Testament , ‘Acts,’ 1900, p. 424.
W. F. Boyd.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Eutychus'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/e/eutychus.html. 1906-1918.
