Acts 8:39

Acts 8:39 pneu/ma {A}

Instead of pneu/ma kuri,ou several witnesses, including A (correction by the first hand) 36^a 94 103 307 322 323 385 467 1739 1765 2298 it^p vg^mss syr^{h with *} arm Ephraem Jerome Augustine (D is defective here), read pneu/ma a[gion evpe,pesen evpi. to.n euvnou/con( a;ggeloj de, (“the Holy Spirit fell on the eunuch, and an angel of the Lord caught up Philip”). Some scholars, holding the longer reading to be original, have explained its absence in the other witnesses as due either to accidental omission or to deliberate excision because of its variance with the account in verses Acts 8:15-18, where it is implied that the Holy Spirit was bestowed only through the laying on of the hands of the apostles.

On the other hand, most scholars have been impressed by the weight of attestation supporting the shorter text as well as by the probability that the words were added in order (a) to make explicit that the baptism of the Ethiopian was followed by the gift of the Holy Spirit, and (b) to conform the account of Philip’s departure to that of his commission (by an angel of the Lord, ver. Acts 8:26).