Acts 18:17

Acts 18:17 pa,ntej {B}

In order to identify the “all” who seized and beat Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, the Western and later ecclesiastical texts (and hence the AV) add the identifying words, “the Greeks,” i.e. the Gentile community. Several minuscule manuscripts read “all the Jews,” which is much more unlikely to represent the real situation.

At the close of the verse the Latin text of codex Bezae reads tunc Gallio fingebat eum non videre (“Then Gallic pretended not to see him”). The line in the Greek text of codex Bezae after bh,matoj is erased and nothing is now legible, but it is fair to assume that it corresponded to the Latin; Clark reconstructs to,te o` Galli,wn prosepoiei/to mh. ivdei/n. ³³⁹

³³⁹ According to a suggestion made by C. A. Phillips, behind the two forms of text one may postulate the Syriac verb , which, according to Brockelmann’s Lexicon Syriacum, means primarily avertit (occulos, faciem) but also non curavit, neglexit (Bulletin of the Bezan Club, V [1928], p. 44; cf. D. Plooij, ibid., IX [1931], p. 16).