Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 26:5

"having knowledge of me from the first, if they be willing to testify, that after the straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee." — Acts 26:5 (ASV)

It was not in spite of his Jewish heritage but because of it, Paul insisted, that he believed and proclaimed what he did. So he began the body of his address by drawing together his Pharisaic background and his Christian commitment, arguing that the Jewish hope and the Christian message are inseparably related. His life had been spent among his people in his own country and in Jerusalem (v.4; cf. 22:3). He had lived as a Pharisee, “the strictest sect” of the Jewish religion (v.5; cf. Php 3:5–6). It was because of the Jewish hope in the resurrection of the dead that he was being tried (v.6). Ironically, the charges against him were brought, of all people, by the Jews themselves. Yet why should any of his audience think it “incredible that God raises the dead” (v.8), particularly when God had validated the truth of the resurrection by raising Jesus from the dead (cf. comment on 23:6)?