Commentaries:
Robertson's Word Pictures (NT)
Was seized (sullhmfqenta). First aorist passive participle of sullambanw.
Rescued him having learned that he was a Roman (eceilamen maqwn oti Romaiov estin). Wendt, Zoeckler, and Furneaux try to defend this record of two facts by Lysias in the wrong order from being an actual lie as Bengel rightly says. Lysias did rescue Paul and he did learn that he was a Roman, but in this order. He did not first learn that he was a Roman and then rescue him as his letter states. The use of the aorist participle (maqwn from manqanw) after the principal verb eceilamen (second aorist middle of ecairew, to take out to oneself, to rescue) can be either simultaneous action or antecedent. There is in Greek no such idiom as the aorist participle of subsequent action (Robertson, Grammar, pp. 1112-14). Lysias simply reversed the order of the facts and omitted the order for scourging Paul to put himself in proper light with Felix his superior officer and actually poses as the protector of a fellow Roman citizen.
Other Robertson's Word Pictures (NT) entries containing Acts 23:27:
Acts 17:19
Acts 23:10
Acts 23:30
Galatians 1:4
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