Bible Synapse
Were there about 120 believers after the ascension, or more than 500?
Hard question · Acts and the letters · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Before Pentecost Peter stood up among the disciples in Jerusalem; “the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty”.
And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,)
The risen Jesus “was seen of above five hundred brethren at once”, most of whom were still alive when Paul wrote.
After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.
The objection
Acts says that after the ascension the believers numbered about 120. Paul says that before the ascension the risen Jesus appeared to more than 500 believers at once. If there were over 500 believers before the ascension, how could there be only 120 afterwards?
The answer
Acts does not say that there were only 120 believers in the world. It gives the size of one meeting. The disciples had come back from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem and were meeting in an upper room (Acts 1:12–14). When Peter stood up to propose a successor to Judas, about 120 were present. The Greek words point the same way: ochlos, ‘crowd’ or ‘gathering’, of names epi to auto, ‘together’ or ‘in the same place’. It is a count of those in the room, and only an approximate one, not a census of the church.
Paul’s 500 saw Jesus on another occasion, during the forty days before the ascension (Acts 1:3), and very likely in another place. Paul does not say where. Many think of Galilee, where Jesus had done most of his work and where he told his disciples to meet him (Matthew 28:7, 10, 16). Most of his followers were Galileans with homes and work there, and nothing suggests that they all moved to Jerusalem. Gill and the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary read the passages this way, and Barnes notes that Acts 1:15 counts those who had gathered in the upper room, not every Christian. Even if the 500 saw Jesus near Jerusalem, Acts counts only those present at a meeting held some days later.
Other answers Christians give
The mountain in Galilee
Some identify the appearance to the 500 with the meeting on the mountain in Galilee (Matthew 28:16–20), to which the women were told to call Jesus’ ‘brethren’ (Matthew 28:10). Matthew mentions only the eleven there, but a larger crowd of disciples may have come with them.
Still open
Paul does not say when or where Jesus appeared to the 500. Galilee is a likely suggestion, not a certainty.
From the classic commentators
This expression cannot mean that there were no more Christians, but that these were all that had convened in the upper room. It is certain that our Saviour had, by his own ministry, brought many others to be his true followers. Compare 1 Corinthians 15:6.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible, on Acts 1:15 (1834)