Acts 20:28

Acts 20:28 qeou/ {C}

The external evidence is singularly balanced between “church of God” and “church of the Lord” (the reading “church of the Lord and God” is obviously conflate, and therefore secondary — as are also the other variant readings). Palaeographically the difference concerns only a single letter: ;=u= and k=u=. In deciding between the two readings one must take into account internal probabilities.

The expression evkklhsi,a kuri,ou occurs seven times in the Septuagint but nowhere in the New Testament. On the other hand, evkklhsi,a tou/ qeou/ appears with moderate frequency (eleven times) in the Epistles traditionally ascribed to Paul, but nowhere else in the New Testament. (The phrase ai` evkklhsi,ai pa/sai tou/ Cristou/ occurs once in Romans 16:16.) It is possible, therefore, that a scribe, finding qeou/ in his exemplar, was influenced by Old Testament passages and altered it to kuri,ou. On the other hand, it is also possible that a scribe, influenced by Pauline usage, changed kuri,ou of his exemplar to qeou/.

In support of the originality of kuri,ou is the argument (urged by a number of scholars ³⁶⁷) that copyists were likely to substitute the more common phrase h` evkklhsi,a tou/ qeou/ for the more rare phrase h` evkklhsi,a tou/ kuri,ou.

On the other hand, it is undeniable that qeou/ is the more difficult reading. The following clause speaks of the church “which he obtained dia. tou/ ai[matoj tou/ ivdi,ou.” If this is taken in its usual sense (“with his own blood”), a copyist might well raise the question, Does God have blood?, and thus be led to change qeou/ to kuri,ou. If, however, kuri,ou were the original reading, there is nothing unusual in the phrase to catch the mind of the scribe and throw it off its balance. This and other considerations led the Committee (as well as a variety of other scholars ³⁶⁸) to regard qeou/ as the original reading.

Instead of the usual meaning of dia. tou/ ai[matoj tou/ ivdi,ou, it is possible that the writer of Acts intended his readers to understand the expression to mean “with the blood of his Own.” (It is not necessary to suppose, with Hort, that ui`ou/ may have dropped out after tou/ ivdi,ou, though palaeographically such an omission would have been easy.) This absolute use of o` i;dioj is found in Greek papyri as a term of endearment referring to near relatives. ³⁶⁹ It is possible, therefore, that “his Own” (o` i;dioj) was a title that early Christians gave to Jesus, comparable to “the Beloved” (o` avgaphto,j); compare Romans 8:32, where Paul refers to God “who did not spare tou/ ivdi,ou ui`ou/” in a context that clearly alludes to Genesis 22:16, where the Septuagint has tou/ avgaphtou/ ui`ou/.

Without committing itself concerning what some have thought to be a slight probability that tou/ ivdi,ou is used here as the equivalent of tou/ ivdi,ou ui`ou/, the Committee judged that the reading qeou/ was more likely to have been altered to kuri,ou than vice versa.

³⁶⁷ E.g., S. P. Tregelles, An Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament (London, 1854), pp. 233 f.; Ezra Abbot, “On the Reading ‘Church of God,’ Acts XX:28, ” Bibliotheca Sacra, xxxiii (1876), pp. 313—352 (reprinted in Abbot’s The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel and other Critical Essays [Boston, 1888], pp. 315 ff.); F. W. Farrar, “A Few Various Readings in the New Testament,” Expositor, IX (1879), pp. 378 ff.; J. H. Ropes, The Text of Acts, pp. 198 f.; and a majority of the NEB translators, according to R. V. G. Tasker, ed., The Greek New Testament (1964), p. 433.

³⁶⁸ E.g., Henry Alford, The Greek Testament, new ed., II (Boston, 1881), pp. 230 f.; R. J. Knowling, The Expositor’s Greek Testament, II (London, 1900), p. 434; E. Jacquier, Les Actes des Apôtres (Paris, 1926), p. 615; K. Lake and H. J. Cadbury, The Beginnings of Christianity, IV (1933), p. 261; Charles F. De Vine, “The ‘Blood of God’ in Acts 20:28, ” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, IX (1947), pp. 381 ff.; F. F. Bruce, The Acts of the Apostles (London, 1951), p. 381; C. S. C. Williams, A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (New York, 1957), p. 234: E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles, A Commentary, pp. 582 f.

³⁶⁹ James Hope Moulton, Prolegomena, p. 90; and Moulton and Milligan, Vocabulary, s.v.