Acts 2:45-47

Acts 2:45-47

The Bezan text of these verses differs in numerous details from that of the other witnesses; sometimes a reason for the alteration is apparent, but in other cases it is not clear what motivated the Western reviser.

In ver. Acts 2:45 the reading “and as many as had possessions or goods sold them” (kai. o[soi kth,mata ei=con h' u`pa,rxeij evpi,praskon, D (syr^p)) may have been introduced in order to avoid giving the impression that all Christians were property-owners.

Codex Bezae has moved kaqV h`me,ran from ver. Acts 2:46, where it described the attendance in the temple, to ver. Acts 2:45 and attached it to the verb dieme,rizon, thus suggesting a daily distribution of the profits from the sale of property (compare evn th|/ diakoni,a| th|/ kaqhmerinh|/ in Acts 6:1). The same manuscript heightens the account of the early community of believers by inserting pa,ntej before proskarterou/ntej in ver. Acts 2:46, and by declaring in the following verse that the believers had favor with all the “world” (not merely with the Jewish “people”). <sup>84</sup> On the other hand, it is not clear (a) why the scribe of codex Bezae rejected o`moqumado,n from one clause and inserted evpi. to. auvto, in the following clause (which then constitutes the second in a series of three instances of the same phrase within three verses); (b) why he moved katV oi=kon from the phrase “breaking bread in their homes” to the previous clause, producing the curious description, “All were regular in attendance at the temple and in their homes [were] together” (pa,ntej te prosekarte,roun evn tw|/ i`erw|/ kai. katV oi;kouj a'n evpi. to. auvto,, where the word a;n is an obvious corruption); or (c) why the phrase evn th|/ evkklhsi,a| was introduced in ver. Acts 2:47. ⁸⁵ (Since the last reading passed into the Textus Receptus, it happens that in the AV the earliest mention of the word “church” in the book of Acts is at this verse; in the other witnesses the word first appears at Acts 5:11.)

⁸⁴ It is possible, however, that this last variant does not represent a deliberate heightening. Several scholars have conjectured that the reading of codex Bezae is due to a confusion between am'l.[' “the world” and aM'[; “the people.” C. C. Torrey, who was disposed to look favorably on this conjecture, pointed out also that “in popular Aramaic speech ~l;[' is sometimes used in a looser way, exactly like the French tout le monde” (Documents of the Primitive Church, p. 145).

⁸⁵ Moulton and Howard suggest that evn th|/ evkklhsi,a| may have crept into the text from being originally a marginal gloss written by a scribe who recognized that this was the meaning of evpi. to. auvto, (Grammar, II, p. 473).