Acts 6:15

Acts 6:15 avgge,lou

After w`sei. pro,swpon avgge,lou the Greek text of codex Bezae (supported by it<sup>h</sup> cop<sup>G67</sup>) adds the phrase e`stw/toj evn me,sw| auvtw/n (“all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel standing in their midst”). Since, however, the Latin text of Bezae reads stans in medio eorum, Harris argues ¹⁵³ that the nominative form of the participle shows that the gloss originally belonged to the first verse of the following chapter, describing the position of the high priest “standing in their midst” (compare Mark 14:60). But this explanation overlooks the fact that what is needed to describe the action of the high priest is not merely that he was standing, but that (as the Markan passage shows) he stood up in their midst and spoke; ¹⁵⁴ the gloss therefore belongs (as the Greek text of Bezae indicates) with what precedes. ¹⁵⁵

¹⁵³ J. Rendel Harris, Four Lectures on the Western Text (London, 1894), pp. 70—75.

¹⁵⁴ So Peter Corssen, Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, CLVIII (1896), pp. 434 f.

¹⁵⁵ Harris remained enamoured of his proposal and a third of a century later offered as an added testimony for the Western reading a stray reference in the Life of St. Kentigern in Capgrave’s Nova Legenda Angliae (ed. Horstmann, II, 121), where it is said that the face of St. Kentigern, while he was at prayer, sometimes appeared to bystanders as it had been the face of an angel standing in their midst (“Intuebantur enim faciem eius tanquam vultum angeli stantis inter illos”). Since, however, nothing is mentioned in the context that would connect the description of St. Kentigern with the account of Stephen in the book of Acts, the force of Harris’s newly found “authority” for the Bezan text is minimal. Cf. Harris’s article, “A New Witness for a Famous Western Reading,” Expository Times, XXXIX (1927—28), pp. 380—381; see also Harris, ibid., pp. 456—458.