The Acts of the Apostles

CHRONOLOGICAL DATA 9
xxi. 4. Seven days (ijjuiepag eTrra) we abode in
Tyre.^
xxi. 7. One day (rjjmepav filav) we abode in
Ptoleraais.
xxiv. 1. After five days (juLeTa irevre ^/mepag),
reckoned from the conveyance of St. Paul to Caesarea,
the high-priest Ananias came thither.
xxiv. 11. There are not more than twelve days (ou
irXelovg elcTLV jmoi rnxepm SwSeKo), says St. Paul, since
I came to Jerusalem.
XXV. 1. Three days after his entry into office {jueTa
Tpeh ^jULcpa^) Festus came to Jerusalem.
XXV. 6. After not more than eight to ten days
(^fxepag ov TrXe/ou? o/cto) rj Scko) Festus returned back
to Caesarea.
XXVii. 27. The fourteenth night (Tearcrapea-KaiSe-
KCLTrj vv^) in the raging storm (XXVii. 33).
Felix was in office longer than two years—there can be no doubt
upon this point—and St. Luke himself says as much a few verses
previously. It is somewhat out of place to charge him unnecessarily
with such an extraordinary instance of discrepancy. Moreover,
(4) SieTi'a cannot be regarded as the general technical expression
for the term of oflSce of a procurator (so that dierias vXrjpw^Ha-Tjs
would simply mean "after the end of his term of office"); for
the term of office was not at that period fixed {vide Hirschfeld,
Die kaiserl. Verwaltungsheamten, 2 Avjl., 1905, s. 445 J".), and
Sieria is found a few chapters later (xxviii. 30) in its ordinary
sense. (5) There is no justification for speaking of an absurd
hiatus in the trial of St. Paul as being implied by the traditional
interpretation, for when St. Luke gives a date in years he never
tells us what details occurred within this period, but leaves it
to the reader to derive this information from the context, that is,
from his general statement concerning the situation of the
Apostle. Therefore the statement in xxiv. 27, when referred to
St. Paul, is in conformity with the other statements giving the
years of the Apostle's stay in great cities {vide supra).