How to read this page

An Intertextuality Pair — one connection between two passages, shown as linked verse cards: the Later text and the Earlier text it quotes, alludes to or echoes. The Significance essay explains why the link matters and where it points in Christ.

Reference Type— how explicit the link is: Quotation, Allusion, or Echo
Connection Method(s)— how it carries meaning: e.g. Typology, Promise-Fulfillment, Analogy, Longitudinal Theme
Found via— where the connection was identified, e.g. the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge or an Anchor-Text Network

Graph View — tap the constellation icon in the top bar to see this page's connections as a web of light: gold points are passages, and the coloured threads are the connection types. Click any type in the graph's own legend to filter it in or out, and use the expand control for the full-screen night sky.

New to a term? The Glossary explains every abbreviation and term on the site in plain words.

Intertextuality Pair

Acts 8:10 → Genesis 19:11

Echo

Later text

Acts 8:10BSB

and all the people, from the least to the greatest, heeded his words and said, "This man is the divine power called the Great Power."

Earlier text

Genesis 19:11BSB

And they struck the men at the entrance, young and old, with blindness, so that they wearied themselves trying to find the door.

Significance

Luke reports that "all of them, from the least to the greatest, paid attention" to Simon the sorcerer, using the Septuagintal idiom for totality that recurs across the OT (Gen 19:11, of the Sodomites struck blind; cf. Jer 6:13; 8:10). The stock phrase quietly measures the scope of Simon's grip: all Samaria, high and low, was captivated by his magic, hailing him "the Great Power of God." Christ-terminus: the universal following that once belonged to a counterfeit is precisely what the true "power of God" — the gospel Philip preaches and the Spirit given through the apostles — will reclaim. The whole city, "from the least to the greatest," is meant to belong to Christ, and the story turns on the difference between the sorcery that dazzles and the Savior who saves.

Found via: Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
Reference Type: Echo
Connection Method(s): None