Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Acts 26:8

R.V. gives more clearly the significance of the original, “Why is it judged incredible with you, if God (as He does) raises the dead?” εἰ with indicative assumes that the hypothesis is true, Vulgate “si Deus mortuos suscitat?” cf. Luke 16:31. It has sometimes been thought that St. Paul here makes a special appeal to the Sadducean part of his audience παρʼ ὑμῖν including among them Agrippa, with his indifference and practical Sadduceism (Alford), with his policy favouring the Sadducees in the appointment of the high priests (Felten): others have seen in the words a reference to the general resurrection with which the Apostle's Messianic belief was connected, or to cases of resurrection in the history of Israel, as, e.g., 2 Kings 4; 2 Kings 4, as if the speaker would ask: Why is it judged a thing incredible in your judgment when you have instances before you in the sacred books accepted by Agrippa and the Jews? But it is far better to consider the words in connection with the great truth to which the whole speech was meant to lead up, Acts 26:23, viz., that Jesus, although crucified, had risen again, that He was at this moment a living Person, and by His resurrection had been proved to be the Messiah, the fulfiller of the hope of Israel. Zöckler regards the question as forming a kind of transition from the general hope of the Jews in a Messiah to the specific Christian hope in Jesus. ἄπιστον : only here in Acts, twice in Luke's Gospel, but frequent in St. Paul's Epistles of those who believed not. See further Nestle, Philologica Sacra, p. 54, 1896, and Wendt, p. 391 and note (1899). Nestle proposes to place the verse as ou of connection here between Acts 26:22-23, with a full stop at the end of the former; and Wendt commends this view.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Acts 26:8

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