Acts 24:7-8

24:7 [[EMPTY]] ¹  24:8 When you examine ²  him yourself, you will be able to learn from him ³  about all these things we are accusing him of doing.” ⁴ 

Acts 25:5-6

25:5 “So,” he said, “let your leaders ⁵  go down there ⁶  with me, and if this man has done anything wrong, ⁷  they may bring charges ⁸  against him.”

25:6 After Festus ⁹  had stayed ¹⁰  not more than eight or ten days among them, he went down to Caesarea, ¹¹  and the next day he sat ¹²  on the judgment seat ¹³  and ordered Paul to be brought.

¹ tc Some later mss include some material at the end of v. 6, all of 24:7, and some material at the beginning of v. 8: “and we wanted to judge him according to our law. 24:7 But Lysias the commanding officer came and took him out of our hands with a great deal of violence, 24:8 ordering those who accused him to come before you.” Acts 24:6b, 7, and 8a are lacking in Ì⁷⁴ א A B H L P 049 81 1175 1241 pm and a few versional witnesses. They are included (with a few minor variations) in E Ψ 33 323 614 945 1505 1739 pm and a few versional witnesses. This verse (and parts of verses) is most likely not a part of the original text of Acts, for not only is it lacking from the better witnesses, there is no easy explanation as to how such could be missing from them. The present translation follows NA²⁷ in omitting the verse number, a procedure also followed by a number of other modern translations.

² tn Or “question.”

³ tn Grk “From whom when you examine him yourself, you will be able to learn…” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, the relative pronoun (“whom”) was replaced by the third person singular pronoun (“him”) and a new sentence begun at the beginning of v. 8 in the translation.

⁴ tn Grk “about all these things of which we are accusing him.” This has been simplified to eliminate the relative pronoun (“of which”) in the translation.

⁵ tn Grk “let those who are influential among you” (i.e., the powerful).

⁶ tn The word “there” is not in the Greek text, but is implied.

⁷ tn Grk “and if there is anything wrong with this man,” but this could be misunderstood in English to mean a moral or physical defect, while the issue in context is the commission of some crime, something legally improper (BDAG 149 s.v. ἄτοπος 2).

⁸ tn BDAG 533 s.v. κατηγορέω 1 states, “nearly always as legal t.t.: bring charges in court.” L&N 33.427 states for κατηγορέω, “to bring serious charges or accusations against someone, with the possible connotation of a legal or court context – ‘to accuse, to bring charges.”

⁹ tn Grk “he”; the referent (Festus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹⁰ tn Grk “Having stayed.” The participle διατρίψας (diatriya") has been taken temporally.

¹¹ sn Caesarea was a city on the coast of Palestine south of Mount Carmel (not Caesarea Philippi). See the note on Caesarea in Acts 10:1.

¹² tn Grk “sitting down…he ordered.” The participle καθίσας (kaqisa") has been translated as a finite verb due to requirements of contemporary English style.

¹³ tn Although BDAG 175 s.v. βῆμα 3 gives the meaning “tribunal” for this verse, and a number of modern translations use similar terms (“court,” NIV; “tribunal,” NRSV), since the bhma was a standard feature in Greco-Roman cities of the time, there is no need for an alternative translation here.