Today I taught lesson 38 on Acts Paul was recognized in the temple, which led to an immediate riot, and Paul would have been killed on the spot had the Roman authorities not intervened. He requests an opportunity to speak to the assembled Jews, which he is given, and thus makes the first of four defense speeches in this reading the others being before Festus, the Sanhedrin, and Herod Agrippa II. He then recounts his vision of Jesus and subsequent conversion experience on the road to Damascus.
Part of that description is in verse 9 of chapter And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice [ tEn de phOnEn ouk Ekousan ] of him that spake to me.
Acts Note that according to this text his companions on the journey did not hear the voice that he did. But this seems to contradict an earlier telling of the account from Acts And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice [ akouontes men tEs phOnEs] , but seeing no man. So which is it, did they hear a voice or did they not? There is a potential way of resolving this apparent contradiction, which has to do with the case of the object of the verb in each account.
Greek is a highly inflected language that uses cases to describe the way a noun is being used in a sentence. English generally does not use cases in that way, although it sometimes does, such as in its personal pronouns. So the idea is that the genitive case refers to the mere perception of the sound, whereas the accusative case describes the intellectual apprehension of what the voice is saying.
So the proposed distinction, which depends on the case of the object of the verb, is one between merely hearing and understanding with comprehension. While on the surface this seems like a nifty resolution to the apparent contradiction, there is a problem with it: the proposed distinction between the cases as objects of the verb akouO does not seem to hold elsewhere in Hellenistic Greek in general, and the New Testament in particular.
