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Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

LIBERTINES*

Freedmen of Jewish extraction. The only reference to Libertines in the NT is Acts 6:9 (KJB). Most modern versions render this Latin term with the more Anglicized “freedmen” (“Freed Slaves,” NLT) on the assumption that the designation is legal-political, not geographical. The appearance of Libertines with groups from various parts of the empire could be taken to mean that the Libertines were a group from the region of Liberatum in North Africa, at that time under Roman jurisdiction. A more probable understanding, however, is that the people who met in the synagogue of the Libertines were Jews who had formerly been slaves. Philo, a Hellenistic Jew of Alexandria, writes about Jews who had been captured during Pompey’s conquests and taken to Rome in 63 BC, where they were sold as slaves but later released. When these Jews were set free, they settled in various parts of the empire: Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and Asia.

These Greek-speaking Jews, according to Acts 6:9, worshiped in a synagogue of their own in Jerusalem. They could not speak the Aramaic of their Palestinian counterparts. In 1913 R. Weill found an inscription in Jerusalem relating to a certain Theodotus, son of Vettenos. The inscription refers to a synagogue that fits the description of Acts 6:9. The early church found it necessary to debate its faith with the Libertines of this synagogue. Stephen, a man appointed earlier to deal with problems arising in the Greek-speaking element of the church (Acts 6:1-6), appears as the able exponent of faith in Christ Jesus against the synagogue of the Libertines.