Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Acts 26:23

εἰ = Hebrews 7:15, i.e., as is most certain from the authority of Scripture, “how that the Christ,” R.V. παθητὸς : “must suffer,” R.V. (“although is subject to suffering,” margin), cf. Vulgate, passibilis (not patibilis); no question here of the abstract possibility of, or capacity for, suffering, although primarily the Greek word implies this, but of the divine destination to suffering, cf. Luke 24:26; Luke 24:44; 1 Corinthians 15:2-3, see Grimm-Thayer, sub v.; Justin Martyr, c. Tryph., c. 89, παθητὸν τὸν χριστόν, ὅτι αἱ γραφαὶ κηρύσσουσι, φανερόν ἐστι. But the same dialogue, c. 90, enables us to realise that even where the idea of a suffering Messiah was entertained, nothing was more abhorrent than the idea of the cross as the outward expression of such sufferings: “If the Messiah can suffer,” cries the Jew Trypho, “yet he cannot be crucified; he cannot die such a shameful, dishonourable death”. See also cc. 36, 76. For the incompatibility of the idea of a suffering Messiah with the ideas current in the time of Jesus see Dalman, Der Leidende und der Sterbende Messias, p. 30, and references may be made to Witness of the Epistles, pp. 360, 361, for other authorities to the same effect; cf. Matthew 16:22; Luke 18:34; Luke 24:21; John 12:34; 1 Corinthians 1:23; Galatians 5:11; see above on Acts 3:18 (p. 113). If we render εἰ if or whether it does not indicate that there was any doubt in Paul's mind; but he simply states in the hypothetical form the question at issue between himself and the Jews. εἰ πρῶτος : “that he first by the resurrection of the dead,” R.V., closely connected with the preceding; the Messiah was to suffer, but “out of his resurrection from the dead” assurance was given not only that the Suffering Messiah and the Triumphant Messiah were one, but that in Him, the true Messiah, all the O.T. prophecies of the blessings of light and life, to Jew and Gentile alike, were to be fulfilled, cf. Isaiah 49:6; Acts 13:47 (Isaiah 9:1-2; Isaiah 60:1). This on the whole seems better than to limit the words to the fact that life and immortality had been brought to light by the resurrection of the Christ: φῶς means more than the blessing of immortality in the future, it means the present realisation of the light of life, cf. Acts 26:18, and Luke 2:32, of a life in the light of the Lord. πρῶτος closely connected with ἐξ ἀναστ., as if = πρωτότοκος ἐκ νέκρων, Colossians 1:18, 1 Corinthians 15:20; 1 Corinthians 15:23, or as if the Apostle would emphasise the fact that Christ first rose in the sense of rising to die no more, Romans 6:9, and so proclaimed light, etc. καταγγέλλειν : “to proclaim,” R.V., cf. Acts 16:17; Acts 17:3; Acts 17:23. λαῷ καὶ τοῖς ἔθνεσι, see above Acts 26:17; even in the Pharisaic hope expressed in Psalms of Solomon, 17, cf. Acts 26:32, we see how far the Gentiles would necessarily be from sharing on an equality with the Jews in the Messianic kingdom, see Ryle and James, Introd., 53, and also for later literature, Apocalypse of Baruch, lxxii., Edersheim on Isaiah 60, Jesus the Messiah, ii., pp. 728, 729.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Acts 26:23

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