What Does Acts 20:8 Mean?

(8) **And there were many lights in the upper chamber.**—We learn from Acts 20:9 that it was on the third floor of the house. In the high narrow streets of Eastern towns the upper storey is often chosen for social or devotional purposes, partly as more removed from the noise of the street, partly as giving access to the roof of the house. Such a room in a good sized house might well hold two or three hundred people. It is a fair inference also that the vividness and minuteness of the account indicate that we have the narrative of an eye-witness. The *lamps* or *torches* (see Notes on Matthew 5:15; Matthew 25:3; John 5:35) are probably mentioned, partly as accounting for the sleep of Eutychus by the heat and closeness of the room, partly, perhaps, as an indirect answer to the calumny loudly asserted afterwards (Tertull. *Apol.* c. 8), and probably even then whispered, that at the meetings of the Christians the lamps were extinguished and free scope given for deeds of shameless licence. There is no ground for assuming that the lamps at this early period had any distinctive ritual or symbolic character, though it would be a natural expression of respect that two or more should be placed in front of the Apostle, or other presiding elder, at such a meeting, on either side of the loaf which was to be broken, and the cup which was to be blest. The position of the celebrant (to use a later, but convenient term) may have been, as in the original institution of the Supper, recumbent on the *triclinium, *or couch, which was at this time used by both Greeks and Romans. It is obvious, however, that this would be an inconvenient posture for distribution to a large assembly, and the special mention of “the Lord’s table” in 1Corinthians 10:21, leads to the conclusion that there was a separate high table (to borrow the familiar language of a college or Inn of Court) at which the celebrant and other ministers sat, their backs to the wall, their faces to the people, and that from that table they distributed the bread and wine, either by taking them, or sending them by the deacons or other ministers, to those who sat in the body of the room, or by giving it to the congregation as they came up to the table in detachments. The later practice of the Church, and the absence of any indication in patristic writings that there was an abrupt change, makes the latter the more probable alternative. The table, so placed, served as a transition stage between the *triclinium* and the altar of the later basilica. The primitive arrangement in which the priest faces the congregation and stands behind the altar, it may be noted, was at first retained in most of the basilicas, and survives to the present day in some of the churches of that type in Rome—as, for example, in that of S. Clemente. This, therefore, and not any eastward or southward position, may claim to be, as has been well said, “at once the most primitive, the most Catholic, the most Protestant” of Eucharistic usages.