Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Acts 26:25

Οὐ μαίνομαι κ. Φ.: whatever may have been the sense in which Festus addressed Paul, there is no doubt as to the courtesy of the Apostle's answer, μετὰ ἐπιεικείας ἀποκρινόμενος, Chrys. κράτιστε : “most excellent,” R.V., see above, Acts 1:1. ἀληθ. καὶ σωφροσ.: veritas not veracitas, objective truth; no suspicion had been raised against St. Paul's truthfulness of character (cf. John 18:37); as our Lord stood before Pilate as a witness for the truth, so His Apostle stands face to face with a Roman sceptic as a witness to the existence of a world of real existences and not of mere shadows and unrealities (Bethge, p. 294). σωφρ.: the opposite of madness, cf. Plato, Protag., 323 [404] (Xen., Mem., i., 1, 16), ὃ ἐκεῖ σωφροσύνην ἡγοῦντο εἶναι τἀληθῆ λέγειν, ἐνταῦθα μανίαν. The two nouns are only found here in St. Luke's writings, but cf. σωφρονεῖν, Luke 8:35; Romans 12:3; 2 Corinthians 5:13; cf. ῥήματα ζωῆς, chap. Acts 5:20. ἀποφθ., cf. Acts 2:4; Acts 2:14, of the Pentecostal utterances, and of the solemn utterances of St. Peter; “aptum verbum,” Bengel. St. Paul was speaking with boldness like St. Peter, and under the same divine inspiration; in LXX of the utterances of the prophets, cf. 1 Chronicles 25:1, of philosophers, and of oracular responses; like the Latin profari and pronuntiare, see above on Acts 2:4. and Grimm-Thayer, sub v.

[404] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Acts 26:25

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