Atos 4:13

Now when they beheld the boldness of Peter and John, and had perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.

Unlearned and ignorant ... This "does not refer to their intelligence or literacy but to the fact that they were not schooled in the traditions of the scribes."[25] "IGNORANT should be translated PRIVATE PERSONS."[26] As De Welt said:

Some men are prone to "set at naught all others" as ignorant and unlearned, who have not been trained in just the way and manner they have. From all these things, dear Lord, deliver us![27]

It is the smug and arrogant pride of the Sadducees which surfaces here, there being utterly no reflection upon the intelligence and understanding of those great men who were the apostles of the Son of God. Luke, in this place, was clearly giving not his own evaluation of the Twelve, but that of the Sanhedrin.

[25] Everett F. Harrison, op. cit., p. 796.

[26] J. R. Dummelow, op. cit., p. 824.

[27] Don DeWelt, Acts Made Actual (Joplin, Missouri: College Press, 1958), p. 67.