Acts 7:25, indirect discourse, antecedent of pronoun

Greek Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek
1

Acts here is narrating (direct discourse) the speech of Stephen. Stephen is giving a compressed history of the sons of Israel. Stephen’s audience is the temple authorities, who have arrested Stephen.

In his narration Stephen has reached the story of Moses, who is beginning to form an idea of his mission. In Stephen’s narration, Moses has just struck down an Egyptian for mistreating an Israelite.

[25] ἐνόμιζεν δὲ συνιέναι τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς ὅτι ὁ θεὸς διὰ χειρὸς αὐτοῦ δίδωσιν σωτηρίαν αὐτοῖς, οἱ δὲ οὐ συνῆκαν.

Translation effort: He [Moses] was thinking that the brothers understood that God through his [Moses’s ?] hand was giving salvation to them, but they did not understand.

Please help me with a couple of points.

  1. ISTM that we have here a subordinate clause in indirect discourse [ὅτι ὁ θεὸς διὰ χειρὸς αὐτοῦ δίδωσιν σωτηρίαν αὐτοῖς]. I need help on this point.

  2. I’m reading the antecedent of αὐτοῦ as Moses, and not as God, but I cannot give a grammatical rationale for this.

  3. If the grammar of this sentence differs from the Attic, I’d be grateful for a comment on this.

2

  1. It’s simply indirect statement after συνιέναι. Quite standard in the GNT to use a ὅτι clause, even where Attic Greek might use accusative and infinitive or a supplementary participle. Here Luke gives us both. In Attic Greek, I believe the present optative could have been substituted for the indicative δίδωσιν.

  2. Context is your friend, but I’m pretty sure that if Luke had intended God as the antecedent, he would have written ἑαυτοῦ.

3

Many thanks Barry for your reply. I have a lot of trouble with pronouns and antecedents, and I have some work to do on this.