A Textual Commentary On The Greek NT

Acts 3:14

Acts 3:14 hvrnh,sasqe {A}

In order to avoid the repetition of hvrnh,sasqe in two successive clauses (cf. ver. Acts 3:13), codex Bezae substitutes evbaru,nate. This word, which appears in a* at Acts 28:27 and in D H al at Luke 21:34, but nowhere else in Luke-Acts, is so manifestly inappropriate in the context (it means “weighed down, burdened, oppressed”) that many scholars have suspected something other than an ordinary corruption. Among proposals that postulate a Syriac or Hebrew original, Chase, ¹⁰⁰ followed by Nestle ¹⁰¹ and Blass, ¹⁰² suggested that the error arose in Syriac where was corrupted into (or misread as) , the former meaning hvrnh,sasqe, and the latter evbaru,nate. Harris, ¹⁰³ on the other hand, was inclined to describe the variant reading as a Latinizing error, related to Irenaeus’s quotation of Acts 2:14 aggravastis et petistis virum homicidam. Ropes, without mentioning Harris, also took evbaru,nate as “a retranslation of the Latin gravastis [in it^d]. But why the Latin translation took this turn is not explained.” ¹⁰⁴ Yet another conjecture was offered by Torrey; rejecting Nestle’s suggestion that the confusion arose in Hebrew when ~trpk, “you denied,” was copied as ~tdbk, “you weighed down, oppressed,” he proposed that “the Aramaic editor rendered hvrnh,sasqe by !WTb.DEK;, ‘you denied, declared false’…It was wrongly copied as WTd>BeK;, which could only be translated (regarded as a Hebraism) by the Greek evbaru,nate.” ¹⁰⁵

¹⁰⁰ F. H. Chase, The Old Syriac Element in the Text of Codex Bezae, p. 38.

¹⁰¹ Eberhard Nestle, Theologische Studien und Kritiken, LXIX (1896), pp. 102 ff.; and Philologica Sacra (Berlin, 1896), pp. 40 f.

¹⁰² F. Blass, Philology of the Gospels (London, 1898), pp. 194 f.

¹⁰³ Codex Bezae (Cambridge, 1891), pp. 162 f.

¹⁰⁴ The Text of Acts, p. 28.

¹⁰⁵ Document of the Primitive Church, p. 145. It is, however, as F. F. Bruce points out, “by no means certain that kabb¢dt¥n could mean evbaru,nate. One might think rather of the Aphel’ akhb¢dt¥n” (The Acts of the Apostles (1951), p. 109).

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A Textual Commentary On The Greek NT

Acts 3:14

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