Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are: In this section, Luke provides "a tantalizingly brief glimpse into the inner workings of the church",[5] combined with "two summary verses" (5:42 and 6:7).

[5] The candidates to perform the ministerial functions within the growing "company of believers"[6] were marked out as "full of the Spirit" (verses 3, 5).

The "transmission of authority from the apostles" is "very deliberately assured through prayer and the laying on of hands" (verse 6).

[5] The distinction made here concerns those Jews joining the community of believers who had been born outside the Holy Land, who spoke the Greek language and had adopted much of the ancient Greek culture, and the native-born Jews who spoke Hebrew and/or Aramaic and lived according to Jewish custom.

[5] One of the seven, Stephen, soon gets into dispute, not with the temple hierarchy, but with members of a group of diaspora synagogues in Jerusalem (6:9).