Acts 17:27

Acts 17:27 zhtei/n to.n qeo,n {A}

The reading ku,rion undoubtedly arose from the careless substitution by a scribe of k=n= for ;=n=, an exchange that occurs frequently. In any case, the argument of Kilpatrick, who assumes that ku,rion was original and that scribes felt it to be ambiguous, ³²³ is difficult to reconcile with the circumstance that the following verb “to feel after” agrees better with ku,rion than with either qeo,n or qei/on.

Although it is doubtless true, as Nestle pointed out, that scribes would be more likely to alter qeo,n to qei/on, ³²⁴ the fact that qei/on occurs in ver. Acts 17:29 may account for its intrusion here. Furthermore, since qeo,j is the subject of the sentence (cf. ver. Acts 17:24), there was an added incentive for scribes to alter qeo,n to either qei/on or ku,rion.

It should be noted that the present text of codex Bezae, ma,lista zhtei/n to. qei/o,n evstin, cannot be construed with the rest of the sentence and must be emended either by altering to, to o[ (as Clark does in accord with the testimony of it^gig and Irenaeus) or by deleting evstin (as Ropes and Streeter ³²⁵ prefer). In either case the presence of ma,lista gives the impression that the reading is a secondary qualification.

³²³ “An Eclectic Study of the Text of Acts,” Biblical and Patristic Studies in Memory of Robert Pierce Casey, ed. by J. Neville Birdsall and R. W. Thomson, p. 75.

³²⁴ Eberhard Nestle, Philologia sacra (Berlin, 1896), p. 42; cf. also Nestle, Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament (London, 1901), pp. 295 f.

³²⁵ Journal of Theological Studies, XXXIV (1933), p. 238.