A Textual Commentary On The Greek NT

Acts 13:27

Acts 13:27 tou/ton avgnoh,santej kai. ta.j fwna.j … kri,nantej {A}

The text of verses Acts 13:27-29 circulated in a variety of forms, the shortest being that of the Alexandrian witnesses. Several forms of the Western text (or, several Western types of text) supply various additions in order to provide a more complete, though summary, account of Jesus’ trial and death. Here and there the text of codex Bezae is ungrammatical and obviously corrupt. By using evidence from the Harclean Syriac and the Old Latin witnesses Blass, Hilgenfeld, Zahn, Ropes, and Clark reconstructed what each regarded as the original Western text. Ropes’s reconstruction, ²⁶⁴ which may be selected as representative of a median text, is as follows: (27) oi` ga.r katoikou/ntej evn VIerousalh.m kai. oi` a;rcontej auvth/j( mh. sunie,ntej ta.j grafa.j tw/n profhtw/n ta.j kata. pa/n sa,bbaton avnageinwskome,naj evplh,rwsan, (28) kai. mhdemi,an aivti,an qana,tou eu`ro,ntej evn au=tw|/( krei,nantej auvto,n( pare,dwkan Peila,tw| eivj avnai,resin\ (29) w`j de. evte,loun pa,nta ta. peri. auvtou/ gegramme,na( hv|tou/nto to.n Peila/ton meta. to. staurwqh/nai avuto.n avpo. tou/ xu,lou kaqaireqh/nai( kai. evpituco,ntej kaqei/lon kai. e;qhkan eivj mnhmei/on (“For those who live in Jerusalem and her rulers, not understanding ²⁶⁵ the scriptures of the prophets, which are read publically every sabbath, have fulfilled them, (28) and though they found no cause of death in him, after having judged him they delivered him to Pilate for destruction. (29) And when they were completing all the things that had been written concerning him, they requested Pilate after his crucifixion that he might be taken down from the tree, and having gained their request they took him down and laid him in a tomb.”

²⁶⁴ J. H. Ropes, “Detached Note on xiii:27—29, ” The Text of Acts, pp. 261—263.

²⁶⁵ On the difference between the Alexandrian and the Western representation of the Jews’ culpability, see E. J. Epp, “The ‘Ignorance Motif’ in Acts and Anti-Judaic Tendencies in Codex Bezae,” Harvard Theological Review, LV (1962), pp. 57—59, and idem, The Theological Tendency of Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis in Acts (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 41—51.

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A Textual Commentary On The Greek NT

Acts 13:27

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