Acts 13:20

Acts 13:20 w`j e;tesin … meta. tau/ta {C}

The problems of verses Acts 13:19 and Acts 13:20 are both textual and exegetical. The Textus Receptus (following D^b E P Y and most minuscules) speaks of the period of the judges following the division of Canaan: “and after that he gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years, until Samuel the prophet” (AV). On the other hand the Alexandrian text transfers the temporal clause to the end of ver. Acts 13:19, and thus makes the four hundred fifty years cover a period prior to the institution of the judges: “… when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance, for about four hundred and fifty years. (20) And after that he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet” (RSV).

The chronological reckoning involved in the reading of the Textus Receptus agrees almost exactly with that of Josephus (443 years, according to Antiquities, VIII.iii:1), and both differ widely from 1 Kings 6:1, where it is said that Solomon (who lived long after the judges) began his temple in the four hundred and eightieth (so the Hebrew text; but the Septuagint text reads four hundred and fortieth) year after the Exodus. The reckoning that lies behind the Alexandrian text evidently covers the four hundred years of the stay in Egypt (ver. Acts 13:17) plus the forty years in the wilderness (ver. Acts 13:18), plus about ten years for the distribution of the land ( Joshua 14:1). ²⁵⁹

On the surface, however, the Alexandrian text appears to limit the four hundred fifty years to the time that passed between the division of the land by Joshua and the institution of the judges. ²⁶⁰ It was probably in order to prevent the reader from drawing such an erroneous conclusion that scribes transposed the temporal clause to the following sentence, producing the reading of the Textus Receptus.

It may be added that when modern translators of the Alexandrian text break up the one Greek sentence of verses Acts 13:17, Acts 13:18, and Acts 13:19 into several different sentences, it is almost inevitable that the reader will take the temporal clause of ver. Acts 13:19 as referring only to the final sentence. ²⁶¹

²⁵⁹ So, e.g., Lake and Cadbury, Haenchen, et al.

²⁶⁰ That the author of the Alexandrian text cannot have intended such a meaning is shown by (1) the verb kateklhrono,mhsen, which refers to a definite point of time and not to a period of more than four centuries; and (2) the usage of the dative case (in distinction from the accusatives of time in verses Acts 13:18 and Acts 13:21) to embrace the whole period from the date implied in ver. Acts 13:17 to the division of the promised land.

²⁶¹ The New American Standard Bible (La Habra, Calif., 1963) attempts to prevent the reader from drawing such an inference by punctuating ver. Acts 13:19 with a dash (“… distributed their land as an inheritance — all of which took about four hundred and fifty years”).