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as it were to “your Excellency” (Εἶπ- leitung in das N. Τ., ii., 360, 383). The instance of the address of the Efist. ad Diognetum, κράτιστε Διόγνητε, is alleged by Blass as an instance that the epithet is not always used in the technical sense mentioned; but to this Ramsay replies that if Diognetus was the friend and teacher of Marcus Aurelius, the emperor might well raise his teacher to equestrian rank; Septimius Severus raised his sons’ tutor to the high dignity of the consul- ship. Ramsay discusses κράτιστος at length in Was Christ born at Bethlehem? (1898), pp. 65, 71, 72, as against Blass, Philology of the Gospels, p. 19. Blass fully recognises that Theophilus held a high position, and that the title in question would naturally occur in a book dedicated to a patron; but it must be borne in mind that Blass regards Theo- philus as of Greek extraction, possibly a fellow-citizen with Luke of Antioch, whilst Ramsay sees in him a citizen ot Rome and a resident in the imperial city. Theophylact asks why Luke should have cared to write to one man only and to value him so highly, and makes answer that it was because the Evangelist was a
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guardian ofthe words spoken by the Lord: /
“Tt is not the will of my Father that one”
of these little ones should perish”. There seems no great reason to doubt that Theophilus was a real personage, and the epithet κράτιστε, at all events in its
3—4.
αὐτόν, ἐν πολλοῖς τεκµηρίοις, δι ἡμερῶν τεσσαράκοντα αὐτοῖς, καὶ λέγων τὰ περὶ τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ Θεοῦ.