=25. Who art thou?= A question asked possibly partly in perplexity and partly in scorn, but more for the purpose of evoking an answer which would give them a point for an attack upon Christ.--=Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning.= The grammatical difficulties in the correct rendition of this passage are almost insuperable, and no two scholars give exactly the same shade of meaning to it, while none of the interpretations afforded are altogether satisfactory, even to the interpreter. The principal interpretations are: (1) _What I from the beginning am teaching you? do you ask that?_ An interrogative expression of surprise. According to this view Christ does not answer the question at all. (2) _Why indeed do I still speak to you at all?_ A language of reproach. (3) _Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning_, the rendering of our English version. (4) _Essentially that which also I discourse to you_; _i. e._, You are to ascertain my nature by a study of my discourses. Neither one of these interpretations, it will be seen, affords a direct answer to the question. 26 I have many things to say and to judge of you: but[327] he that sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him. [327] ch. 7:28. 27 They understood not that he spake to them of the Father. =26, 27. Many things I have which I might say, and many sentences which I might pronounce concerning you.= The meaning and the connection is obscure, and the translation which I have given is not so literal as that of the English version. But Christ elsewhere declares that he has not come to judge the world (ver. 15; chaps. 3:17; 12:47), and to understand him here to assert the contrary makes his utterances contradictory. Moreover, if we interpret his declaration as the English version does, it is difficult to see any connection with the preceding or the subsequent clause. I understand therefore that he means that he _has_ many things to say, and many judgments formed in his own mind, which he might pronounce, but that he will only speak those things which he has been commissioned by the Father to speak; and his commission at this time is not to judge, but to save the world.--=They understood not that he spake to them of the Father.= Strange! Less strange, perhaps, than it now seems to us, for we read this discourse in the light of eighteen centuries of Christianity. So far, too, Christ had not designated by any title the One who had sent him. He had veiled his meaning, as he did in the parables, that he might not be fully understood at once; for he could hope to get lodgment for the truth only by gradually unfolding it. “There is no accounting for the _ignorance of unbelief_ as any minister of Christ knows by painful experience.”--(_Alford._)