Acts 8:37

Acts 8:37. This verse is one of the very few important doctrinal passages of the New Testament which the studies of late years on the subject of textual criticism have affected. The devout student of the word of God fearlessly accepts the con-elusions which result from a careful examination of the varied evidence upon which the genuineness of each passage of the New Testament rests. The result of such study has been, that scholars have agreed to reject as undoubtedly spurious, here and there, a famous doctrinal text, such as I St. John 5:7, to mark as at least doubtful such a passage as Acts 8:37. The words here are found in Irenæus, Acts 3:12 (second century); they are cited by this father without the least misgiving. The celebrated Codex E (Landianus) of the Acts (sixth century) contains them, but they appear in no other of the Uncial MSS. of the ‘Acts;' they are found in the Philoxenian Syriac certainly, and in the Vulgate, etc. The Latin fathers, Cyprian, Jerome, and Augustine, were all acquainted with it. It was known and certainly well received in the Western or Latin Church, from the second century downwards, and afterwards made some way among the later Greek Codices and writers (see Scrivener, New Testament Criticism, pp. 387-443, 444). Meyer suggests that the words may have been taken, in the first instance, from some very early Baptismal Liturgy, and thence copied by some scribe into a manuscript of the Acts. Of recent commentators, Wordsworth declines to expunge them, and Bornemann includes them in brackets; but the majority exclude them altogether from the text.