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Luke signals a shift by repeating in 11:19-20, the words of 8:4, which inaugurated the wider outreach of the Jerusalem church following Stephen’s death: “Now those who were scattered went about preaching the Word” (8:4); Now those who were scattered . . . went about . . . (speaking) the Word . . . preaching the Lord Jesus (11:19-20). By this means, Luke indicates that the scattering had two results, which took place at the same time. On the one hand, the Jerusalem church began a wider outreach that extended through Samaritans (8:9-25) and proselytes (8:26-40) even to God-fearers (9:32-11:18). In a much briefer summary, the Christians in Antioch do the same thing. Like the Jerusalem community, they first preach only to Jews (11:19); but in Antioch some reach out to Greeks (v.20). (The term Hellenists, which appears in some manuscripts, is a contradictory textual variant, since elsewhere [6:1; 9:29] they are clearly Jews.)
Luke’s use of the term Greeks is revealing. He uses it in the expected way to describe persons of the Roman culture (19:10, 17; 20:21; 21:27ff.). He also uses it to describe Gentiles who participate in the worship of the Jewish synagogue (14:1; 17:4-5; 18:4), who, on two occasions, are further described as being devout (i.e., God-fearers, 17:4; worshipers of God, 18:7). The same use seems to apply to Timothy’s parents. His mother was “a woman of the Jewish faith” (i.e., a proselyte; cf. 24:24 for Luke’s term for a Jewish woman); his father was a “Greek,” presumably a God-fearer, a situation that often existed in diaspora synagogues. It seems likely, in the parallelism of Antioch with Jerusalem, together with the contrast of a predominately Jewish outreach in 11:19, that the “Greeks” in Antioch were Godfearers. In Antioch, however, there is not simply one person with family and friends who believed, as with Cornelius, but a “great number” (11:21).
The Jerusalem church is still seen exercising oversight of the Christian movement (v.22), and they send Barnabas to check up on this situation. Being a man full of the Holy Spirit, Barnabas is open to this greater outreach of the Gospel to God-fearers and joins the work with such effectiveness that he has to bring Saul from Tarsus to assist in the work (vv.23-26).
The final proof that the Christian outreach is still within the context of Judaism is their title in Antioch: Christians. The term literally means “messianists” (those who hold that Jesus is the Messiah), a term that would have had significance only within a Jewish context.