Acts 11:13

and he shewed us how he had seen an angel The Greek has "and he related to us how he had seen theangel." Before St Peter made this defence, and long before St Luke put it down in the Acts, the story of Cornelius and his vision would be well known, and so the definite article would be used in speaking of it, i.e. "theangel" of whom all men had heard.

said unto him The oldest MSS. omit the last two words.

Send men to Joppa "Men" is omitted in the best MSS. This is one of the numerous insertions by which a repetition of a narrative in this book has been brought into exact verbal accord with the previous form. There have been times when devout men thought much of this verbal accord. It is therefore worth notice that the writers of the N. T. disregarded it utterly. The words in such a solemn inscription as that above the Cross differ in all the four Gospels, and St Peter, when in the Second Epistle (Acts 1:17) he speaks of the heavenly voice heard at the Transfiguration, varies verbally from each of the accounts of the Evangelists.