The contrast between the response of the priests and Sadducees, and the reaction of the people in the crowd, is such that a contrastive conjunction such as but is important.

It may be essential to elaborate somewhat on many, since this may need to be linked directly to the crowd, for example, “many of the people in the crowd.”

Message is literally “word,” but it is used here in the specialized sense of the Christian message, a meaning which it has in a number of places throughout Acts. However, in this context one may need to translate as “what Peter and John had preached.”

Many languages require some goal to the term believed. The closest goal is the message, for example, “they believed it.” On the other hand, it is also possible to employ a frequently recurring formula “they believed in Jesus.”

The number of men came to about five thousand indicates that the total number of believers was now five thousand (see 2.41), not that an additional five thousand persons were added to the group, for example, “all the believers totaled five thousand” or “the number of believers became five thousand.” It is impossible to say whether the term men includes women as well.

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Acts of the Apostles. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1972. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .