Acts 23:25 — ExegesisTAB

The verse is composed of a single participial construction beginning with grapsas {γράψας | gráp-sas} ‘having written,’ which denotes an action completed prior to and preparatory for the main verbal action in the wider context. The participle takes epistolen {ἐπιστολὴν | e-pi-sto-lḗn} ‘letter’ as its direct object. This noun is further modified by the participle echousan {ἔχουσαν | é-khou-san} ‘having,’ which functions attributively and agrees with epistolen in case, gender, and number. Echousan governs the object phrase ton tupon touton {τὸν τύπον τοῦτον | tón tú-pon toû-ton}, literally ‘this pattern,’ indicating that the letter possessed a specific, recognizable form or formula. Greek word order places the head noun first, followed by participial and object phrases that narrow its description, moving from the act of writing to the character of the document. In English, the anterior participle grapsas is rendered as “Having written” in a dependent clause for formal equivalence, while the dynamic rendering uses a finite verb (“He wrote”) to supply an explicit subject and complete clause. The phrase ton tupon touton is translated as “this pattern” and marked with a colon in English to anticipate the citation of the letter’s content that follows in the narrative.