22:1

Brothers and fathers: This phrase in Greek is literally “Men, brothers and fathers.” The phrase Brothers and fathers describes the word “men.” The word Brothers is Paul’s polite address to fellow Jews that are his age or younger. The word fathers is Paul’s polite address to fellow Jews that are older than him. It includes any Jewish leaders in the crowd.

In some languages a literal translation would wrongly refer only to Paul’s actual brothers and father. If that is true in your language, use whatever terms are natural for addressing people from the same ethnic group, including leaders. For example:

My companions and my fathers
-or-
my brothers and my uncles
-or-
You men and elders who are Israelites as I am
-or-
My fellow Jews (Good News Translation)

See how you translated this phrase in 7:2.

my defense before you: The word defense indicates that Paul would explain who he was and why he had been in the temple area. It was similar to defending himself in court, because the Jews from Asia accused him of wrongdoing. Other ways to translate this phrase are:

what I have to say to you in my defence (New Jerusalem Bible)
-or-
my words to reply/answer to your accusations
-or-
the words I have to say to explain

© 2001, 2021 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.