audientibus accommodata,’ says Blass); in both cases starting from truths which some of the Greek philosophers might themselves have pressed home, but in each case leading up to and insisting upon the need and necessity of repentance for wise and simple alike ; were eminently characteristic of a man who became as a Jew to the Jews, as without law to those without law, as a Greek to the Greeks, and such discourses in the brief form in which they have reached us in Acts may well have expressed the actual teach- ing delivered by St. Paul in Lystra and in Athens (see for these speeches especially Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 146 ff., and for the speech at Athens, Curtius, ‘‘ Paulus in Athen,’ Gesammelte Abhandlungen, ii., pp. 527-543, and references in commentary'): ‘there is no reason,” writes McGiffert, ‘‘ for questioning the trustworthiness of the discourse at Athens as a whole . . . in fact such a discourse as that ascribed to Paul is exactly what we should expect from him under the circumstances” (u. s., p. 260).
The speech to the Ephesian elders at Miletus, xx. 18-35, is constantly marked by St. Paul’s characteristic words and phrases, and its teaching is strikingly connected with that of the Ephesian Epistle (see notes in commentary, and cf. Page, Acts, p. xxxvi.; Lock, ‘‘ Ephesians,” Hastings’ B.D.; Cook, Speaker's Commentary, p. 342, and also Lekebusch, A postelgeschichte, pp. 336-339; Nésgen, µ. 5., p. 53; Felten, u. s., p. 33). No one has affirmed the historical truthfulness of this address more strongly than Spitta, and in this instance also we may again conclude with McGiffert, p. 339, that “we shall be safe in assuming that the account of Paul’s meeting with the elder brethren of Ephesus, and the report of the words which he uttered are substantially accurate”. We may well feel this security when we recall that St. Luke would be himself a hearer of St. Paul’s pathetic farewell.
The three remaining speeches contain three ἀπολογίαι of St. Paul, one before the Jews and the chiliarch in Jerusalem, xxii. 1-21, the second before Felix, xxiv. 10-21, and the third before Festus and Agrippa, xxvi. The first reaches us through the medium of a Greek translation, and it is noticeable that the speech in this form contains no Pauline words or expressions, although some words remind us of him, ¢.g., ἀπολογία, ἀπολούειν, παρα-
1 Hilgenfeld blames Curtius because he has not explained the source of infor- mation for St. Paul’s address, since the Apostle was at Athens alone, but Kna- benbauer writes, Actus Apostolorum, p. 308, ‘ Probabilissime is ‘cum aliis id plane’ superfluum reputavit, quia Paulus post eam orationem neque memoriam neque loquelam amisit; unde ipse potuit narrare quid Athenis egerit”’.