Acts 9:25

Acts 9:25 oi` maqhtai. auvtou/

The oldest reading extant in the manuscripts appears to be oi` maqhtai. auvtou/ (î<sup>74</sup> a A B C 81* vg al). This was altered (perhaps because in verses Acts 9:19 and Acts 9:26 maqhtai, is used absolutely) to oi` maqhtai. auvto,n (69 81^c), or to auvto.n oi` maqhtai, (E H L P syr<sup>p, h</sup> cop<sup>sa, bo</sup> arm al, followed by the Textus Receptus), or to oi` maqhtai, (S 36 429 al).

Since it is scarcely conceivable that Jewish converts to Christianity at Damascus would be called “Paul’s disciples,” various attempts have been made to alleviate the difficulty that the best attested reading involves. Occasionally the genitive auvtou/ is construed as the object of labo,ntej (“taking hold of him”), ¹⁸⁵ but the sequence of words as well as the unnatural sense stand against this expedient. To assume, as Rengstorf does, that these disciples had been Paul’s “companions on the way to Damascus, who through his own leadership and by his witness had themselves come to the faith,” ¹⁸⁶ is totally gratuitous. The most satisfactory solution appears to be the conjecture that the oldest extant text arose through scribal inadvertence, when an original auvto,n was taken as auvtou/. ¹⁸⁷

¹⁸⁵ So, e.g., Henry Alford, The Greek Testament, ad loc.

¹⁸⁶ K. H. Rengstorf in Kittel’s Theologische Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, vol. IV, p. 464 [English trans., p. 459]. The variant reading in Acts 14:20 D E kuklwsa,ntwn de. tw/n maqhtw/n auvtou/ provides no real explanation for the present verse.

¹⁸⁷ Compare E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles, ad loc.