Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Acts 27:14

μετʼ οὐ πολὺ δὲ, cf. Acts 20:12. οὐ μετρίως, Luke 15:15; Acts 1:5, “observe the ‘Litotes' of οὐ with an adjective or adverb, four times in ‘We' sections, twelve in rest of Acts, twice in Luke 7:6; Luke 15:13, rare in rest of N.T.,” Hawkins, p. 153. ἔβαλε κατʼ αὐτῆς : intransitive, as often in classical Greek since Homer: “there beat down from it,” R.V., i.e., from Crete and its mountains over 7,000 feet in height; so also Blass, Holtzmann, Ramsay, Zöckler, Page, Rendall, Wendt, Weiss, Knabenbauer, and J. Smith, in later editions, see p. 100, 4th edition; a graphic description of a common experience in the Cretan waters; as the ship crossed the open bay between Cape Matala and Phœnice, the wind suddenly shifting to the north, a violent hurricane (strictly from east-north-east) burst upon them from Mount Ida, cf. St. Luke's κατέβη, Luke 8:23, of a squall descending from the hills on the Lake of Gennesaret, and κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ, Luke 8:33, cf. Matthew 8:32 (J. Smith, Weiss, Zöckler). Breusing, p. 164 (so Hackett, Lewin, Farrar), takes κατʼ αὐτῆς as = against the ship, but the word πλοῖον is used for ship, and not ναῦς until Acts 27:41. Luther regarded αὐτῆς as agreeing with προθέσεως (so Tyndale and Cranmer). τυφωνικός : formed from τυφώς, turbo, denoting not the direction, but the vehemence of the wind (Breusing, Page), a heavy, eddying squall (J. Smith, Ramsay), vorticosus (Bentley). Εὐροκλύδων, see critical note. If we read with [412] [413] [414] * Εὐρακύλων, render “which is called Euraquilo,” R.V. Perhaps the irregularly formed Euraquilo occasioned the corrections. V. Euroaquilo. Blass calls it vox hybrida from εὗρος and Aquilo (qui Latin = κῠ, ut Ἀκύλας, Acts 18:2), strictly the “East-north-east” wind (Breusing thinks “North-east” sufficient; so Wycliffe and Tyndale in their translations). Such a wind would drive the ship into the African Syrtis as the pilot feared, Acts 27:17, and the word is apposite to the context, to all the circumstances, and is so well attested as to fairly claim admission as the word of St. Luke. The Latin had no name for the Greek Καικίας blowing between Aquilo and Eurus, and it is quite possible that the Roman seamen, for want of a specific word, might express this wind by the compound Euro-Aquilo; cf. ὁ καλούμενος, which seems to point to some popular name given to the wind; for similar compounds cf. Εὐρόνοτος and Euro-Auster, and Gregalia, the name given to the same wind by the Levantines, as Euripus has become Egripou (Renan, Saint Paul, p. 551); see Bentley, Remarks on a late Discourse on Freethinking, p. 97, quoted at length by Breusing, “Euraquilo” Hastings' B.D. and B.D., i.

[412] Codex Sinaiticus (sæc. iv.), now at St. Petersburg, published in facsimile type by its discoverer, Tischendorf, in 1862.

[413] Codex Alexandrinus (sæc. v.), at the British Museum, published in photographic facsimile by Sir E. M. Thompson (1879).

[414] 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 27:14

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