NT Text: Acts 6:7 — "So the word of God continued to spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem grew rapidly"
OT Source(s):
Source: Anchor-Text Network — Genesis 1:28 (Beale, The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New Testament; Köstenberger & O'Brien, Salvation to the Ends of the Earth)
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Typology + Redemptive-Historical Progression
Anchor Text: Gen 1:28 — The Adamic Commission
Significance: Luke describes the church's growth with the verbatim LXX verb pair of the Adamic commission: ηὔξανεν καὶ ἐπληθύνετο ("grew and multiplied") reproduces Gen 1:28 LXX αὐξάνεσθε καὶ πληθύνεσθε ("be fruitful and multiply"). The growth of "the word of God" is thereby presented as the fulfillment of the creation mandate — the church is the new corporate Adam, finally filling the earth not with biological offspring alone but with disciples bearing the restored image of God. Luke deploys this formula three times as structural markers across Acts (6:7; 12:24 "the word of God grew and multiplied"; 19:20 the variant ηὔξανεν καὶ ἴσχυεν), each closing a major expansion narrative and tracing the gospel's advance from Jerusalem → Judea/Samaria → the ends of the earth, structurally fulfilling the Acts 1:8 mandate that is itself a Lukan version of Gen 1:28 and Matt 28:18-20. Per the ATN §4 this is indirect (typological) fulfillment by way of an assimilated LXX formula — the Adamic-commission signature reapplied to the apostolic mission.