114 John C. Poirier What should we make of Paul’s (or Luke’s) care in mentioning that Jesus spoke “Hebrew” at the Damascus Road christophany? Here the narrative clues are fewer than those guiding our interpretation of Acts 21,40 and 22,2, but there may be some hints in the parallel accounts of Paul’s christophany in chapters 9 and 22. As I hope to show, the narrative role of τῇ Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ in Acts 26,14 may be similar to what it is in 21,40 and 22,2. More specifically, I suggest that Christ’s use of Hebrew was intended to leave Paul’s trav- eling companions out of the loop. It is of course true that Hebrew was in some ways a more appropriate language for a heavenly being.16 It may be doubted, however, whether that point is strong enough to merit mention by the author, and if so, why would it be mentioned only in the book’s third account of the experience? Perhaps we should consider the effect of Paul’s christophany on his traveling companions. In both 9,7 and 22,9 we are given to know that these companions were on the outside looking in with respect to Paul’s christophany (although they had also been knocked to the ground), but these two verses diverge in how they relate Paul’s companions’ lack of access to what the Lord said to Paul. In 9,7, we are told that the men “stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no one”, while Acts 22,9 offers a different account, according to which the men with Paul saw the light but did not “hear the voice of him that spoke”. The plain indication of both accounts is that Christ’s message for Paul was not intended for his fellow travelers, and this might suggest (albeit only weakly) that the use of an exclusivist language would have been appro- priate. A more promising indication that this is the case springs from the fact that we can reconcile the second account to the first rather easily by taking ἀκούω in 22,9 in the sense of “understand”: the men indeed heard the voice, as 9,7 says, but they did not understand what it said (22,9).17 And why did they not understand? Perhaps Paul tells us why in 26,14: the Lord spoke to him in Hebrew. As I see it, the weaknesses of this interpretation are twofold: (1) un- der ordinary rules of exegesis, it is far from clear that conflicting verses should be reconciled in this way, and (2) we cannot know that Paul’s A. Feuillet, Le Christ sagesse de Dieu: D’après les épitres Pauliniennes (Paris 1966) 16 19, emphasizes that Christ is presented within the account as “un être céleste et glorieux”. Hebrew was widely held to be the language of heaven. According to b. Sota 36b and Gen. Rab. 89, Pharaoh knew all seventy languages of the nations, yet his ignorance of Hebrew made him inferior to Joseph. But cf. b. Sot. 33a on the possibility of an Aramaic bat qol. On non-Hebrew oracles, see Dalman, Jesus–Jeshua, 17. In both verses, φωνή is accompanied by the definite article. 17