Acts 7:31-34

Acts 7:31-34

The manuscript cop^G67 is unique in making extensive additions to Stephen’s account from the Old Testament and from tradition: “… as he [Moses] drew near to look (there came the voice of the Lord saying), the Lord spoke to him in a voice saying, Moses, Moses! But he said, Who art thou, Lord? But he said to him, Do not draw near to this place. Take thy shoes off thy feet, for the place on which thou standest is a holy place. He said to him, I am the God…and of Jacob. But Moses (trembled and did not dare to look) turned away his face, for he feared to look straightforwardly at God. Then (the Lord) God said this to (him) Moses, (Loose the sandals from thy feet, for the place where thou art standing is holy ground). Seeing I have seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning about their slave-labor, for I know their heartache. I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians. (And now) come, I (will) send thee to Egypt that thou mayest bring them out of that land and take them into another land, which is good and plentiful, a land abundant with milk and honey, the place of the Canaanites and Hittites and Amorites and Pheresites and Hevites and Gergesites and Jebusites. And the cry of the children of Israel has come up to me, some of the sufferings with which the Egyptians have afflicted them. Now come, and I send thee to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and thou wilt bring my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt.” ¹⁶⁰

¹⁶⁰ Theodore C. Petersen’s translation (see Catholic Biblical Quarterly, XXVI [1964], pp. 234 f.). Words which are absent from the Coptic manuscript, but which are present in the Vulgate text, are enclosed by Petersen within parentheses. For the Coptic text with a German translation (with Western readings similarly italicized), see Hans-Martin Schenke’s edition in Texte und Untersuchungen, vol. 137 (1991).