<p>3:11 <i>While he c<em>lung to Peter and John</em></i>- So often in this narrative, we see the essence of events of the Gospels now being repeated in the experience of the Lord's followers. In this case, the similarity is with how the healed man of Lk. 8:38 dreaded the idea of being parted from his healer, the Lord Jesus.</p><p>In the same way as the Lord stretched forth His hand and saved Peter, so He stretches forth His hand, Peter observed, to save all who would come to Him (Mt. 14:31 = Acts 4:30). But Peter is framed as Jesus, in that he too stretched out his hand to save others as Jesus had done to him (Mt. 14:35 = Acts 5:15,16; Mt. 14:31 = Acts 3:7), bidding them come through the water of baptism as Jesus had done to him. As Jesus in the boat was worshipped after saving Peter, so men tried to worship Peter (Mt. 14:33 = Acts 3:11). So Peter went through what we all do- having been saved by Jesus, having come to Him and having been rescued by the outstretched arm, he responds to this by doing the same for others. When the Lord &ldquo;caught&rdquo; hold of Peter as he sunk in the waves (Mt. 14:31), a Greek word is used which occurs only once elsewhere: &ldquo;He did not take hold s.w. to catch of Angels, but of the seed of Abraham&rdquo; (Heb. 2:16). The Hebrew writer was surely alluding to the Lord&rsquo;s &lsquo;catching&rsquo; of desperate Peter and pulling him to salvation- and saw in Peter a symbol of all those who will be saved by Christ.</p><p><i>All the people ran together to them in the portico called Solomon's, astounded</i>- There was a crowd mentality here; everyone got involved in a stampede towards Peter. Their mentality and direction was dictated by a group psychology rather than individual faith. The word only occurs later in the New Testament in Peter's letter, where he writes of how Gentiles &quot;think it strange that you do not <em>run with them </em>in the same flood of dissipation&quot; (1 Pet. 4:4). The similarity was that Peter reflected how a crowd can stampede towards the symbols of Jesus, and yet stampede in the way of sin. But it's individual faith that the Lord searches for.</p><p><em>&ldquo;The portico called Solomon's</em>&rdquo;, Gk. 'which <em>is </em>called Solomon's'. This suggests that the Gospel of Luke was written whilst the temple was still standing; otherwise a past tense would have been used. This is one of many reasons for thinking that the Gospels were written early rather than later, certainly pre-AD70. The Gospel records and Acts are the transcripts of histories which were orally distributed to begin with, and then written down under Divine inspiration soon after they began circulating- and not many decades after the events, as the critics wrongly claim. The scene here is reminiscent of that in the Gospels, when a crowd of people gathered around the Lord Jesus in the same porch (Jn. 10:23). And again, we see Peter and John presented as the manifestations of Jesus on earth, just as we are; repeating in essence the situations encountered by the historical Jesus. See on 3:9 <em>Praising God</em>.</p>