Acts
It would unduly enlarge the extent of this work were I to go on mentioning all the passages in the Acts that are more or less striking from the textual point of view. This book has already been more frequently referred to than the others. I would again refer the student to Zahn’s Introduction. I agree with that writer in thinking it impossible in many cases to suppose that a scholiast manufactured the text we now find in Codex D with no other material before him save the usual text and his inkhorn. At the same time there is undoubtedly room for much diversity of opinion with respect to many matters of detail. Ι would instance such a simple narrative as that of Acts iii. 1-5, and ask what reasonable ground a copyist could have had for altering ὃς into οὗτος, ἀτενίσας into ἐμβλέψας, βλέψον into ἀτένισον, ἐπεῖχεν into ἀτενίσας or vice versa, or for omitting or inserting ὑπάρχων or λαβεῖν.277 Such changes might, however, be introduced by an author who writes a passage twice over. Without himself being fully conscious of his reasons for doing so, he might substitute a final construction for a participle, introduce or remove an asyndeton, replace one word by its synonym, and make all the striking linguistic changes which a comparison of the two texts reveals.
Time will show whether I am right in my conjecture that ἐβαρύνατε in iii. 14 is due to an error in translation. In illustration of the interchange of λαοῦ and κόσμου in ii. 47, I have cited in Philologica Sacra, p. 39, a number of instances of the confusion of עם or עמא with עלם or עלמא, to which I would now add Daniel viii. 19, Sirach xlv. 7; xlvii. 4; Matt. i. 21 (in the Curetonian Syriac). Compare also Eusebius, Eccles. Hist., iv. 15, 26; History of Mary, ix. 17; xiv. 11 (ed. Budge). Whether the change in the passage in question is really to be explained in this way, or by the supposition of an “anti-Judaic tendency,” as Corssen prefers (Göttinger gelehrte Anzeigen, 1896, vi. 444), may be left an open question for the present. I would just point to one thing in favour of my view, and in answer to what Zahn says in his Einleitung, ii. 423. He says there: “Linguistic considerations are against the supposition that a pure Greek like Luke, the physician of Antioch, was able to read a Hebrew book. For a thousand Jews (Syrians and Copts) who were able at that time to read, write, and speak Greek, there would be at most a single Greek possessed of a corresponding knowledge of Hebrew or Aramaic. And I confess that I have hitherto sought in vain for this rara avis.” Quite true, but how do we know that the physician of Antioch was a pure Greek? All the Prologues to the Gospels unanimously call him “natione Syrus.” I have pointed out in my Philologica Sacra, p. 13, what is very generally admitted, that in the New Testament Ἕλληνες denotes simply the “heathen,” whether they speak Greek or not.278 The woman mentioned in Mark vii. 26 was a Ἑλληνὶς Συρο-Φοινίκισσα τὸ γένος, and in the same way Luke was a Ἕλλην of Antioch (Acts xi. 20), but Σύρος τὸ γένος. He is one of the thousand who could read, write, and speak Greek, though he was not above making such a mistake in translation when using a Hebrew or Aramaic book as I think he certainly does in Luke xi. 41, and as I am inclined to think he does in Acts iii. 14, till I find a better explanation of the reading ἐβαρύνατε than has yet been given.279 I am glad to see from Zahn that more than seventy years ago, in his dissertation entitled De Codice Cantabrigiensi (1827), p. 16, Schultz suggested that the text of D may perhaps be derived from a Syriac version. According to what I have said above on Tatian, this view must certainly be admitted as possible, and I see that it has been revived by Chase.
A new solution of the textual problem in Acts has been suggested by Aug. Pott (Der abendländische Text der Apostelgeschichte und die Wir-Quelle, Leipzig, 1900). He thinks that the original narrative drawn up by Luke existed as a separate work for some time after it had been worked up into our canonical Acts, and that notes were taken from the former and inserted in the margin of the latter, and in this way came into the text of Codex D and its associates. Against this, however, there is the fact that similar problems emerge in the Gospel of Luke where this distinction cannot be made.
For the sake of brevity I append notes to a few passages only of Acts.
But at the outset I must express my surprise that Wendt, even in his eighth edition of 1899, repeats the statement that the title of the book in D is πρᾶξις ἀποστόλων. Even without the assurance given by Blass in his Grammatik, § iii. 1, 2, it should be borne in mind that “δωσιν stands equally for both δῶσιν and δώσειν,” and that accordingly πραξις may be either πράξεις or πρᾶξις. In the case before us it is the former. As illustrations take the following from D in Acts:—δυναμι, iii. 12, iv. 7; πιστι, vi. 7; ις, iv. 30; μηνας τρις, vii. 20; and conversely θλειψεις μεγαλη, vii. 11; μερεις, viii. 21; δυναμεσει and σημιοις side by side in ii. 22. Compare also Mark vi. 2; vi. 14; xiii. 25; Luke xxi. 26; Acts viii. 13; (δυναμις τοιαυται; αι δυναμις; δυναμις μεγαλας). It is true that in every case in which the title is written out, which occurs only five times altogether, it is πραξις, but this is to be understood as plural, like actus in the Latin. It came afterwards to be used as singular in the Syriac (Zahn, Einl., ii. 370, 383, 388), but that is nothing strange. We say “the Times says”; and we have an analogy in the use of the word biblia in the Middle Ages when the neuter plural biblia bibliorum became biblia bibliae (singular feminine).
i. 23. It is a matter of commentary rather than of textual criticism, but Wendt, in his eighth edition, asserts that nothing further is known of this Joseph surnamed Justus. Eusebius, on the authority of Papias, mentions παράδοξον περὶ Ἰοῦστον τὸν ἐπικληθέντα Βαρσαβᾶν γεγονός, ὡς δηλητήριον φάρμακον ἐμπίοντος καὶ μηδὲν ἀηδὲς διὰ τὴν τοῦ Κυρίου χάριν ὑπομείναντος (Eccles. Hist., iii. 39). The name of Aristion is inserted in the margin of this passage in Rufinus’s Latin translation of Eusebius. This marginal gloss acquires a peculiar importance from the fact that the name Ariston is inserted in the Etschmiadzin manuscript of the Gospels over Mark xvi. 9-20, apparently ascribing these verses or their main contents to him. Compare Zahn, Einleitung, ii. 231, and see Plate IX.
iv. 6. On the reading Ἰωνάθας in D for Ἰωάννης, see above, p. 243.
iv. 24, and v. 39. See Harris, Two Important Glosses in the Codex Bezae, Expositor, November 1900, pp. 394-400.
xi. 27, 28. In his treatise, “On the Original Text of Acts xi. 27, 28” (Berliner Sitz.-Berichte, Heft 17), Harnack comes to the conclusion that the Western text here cannot be the original.
xv. 20, 21. On Harnack’s examination of the Apostolic Decree, see Selbie in the Expository Times for June 1899, p. 395. Harnack comes to the same results as Zahn, but draws the opposite conclusion from them. See above, p. 232 f.
xvi. 6. The article is omitted before Γαλατικὴν χώραν by א A B C D minuscules. For this Blass, on the authority of p, which reads “Galatie regiones,” substitutes τὰς Γαλατικὰς χώρας = “vicos Galatiae.” On this see Zahn, Einleitung, i. 133. The omission of the article does not necessitate taking τὴν Φρυγίαν as an adjective (so Wendt8); it might still be rendered “through Phrygia and Galatian territory.”
xvii. 27. In my Philologica Sacra, p. 42, I say that it was easier to change τὸ θεῖον (β) into τὸν θεόν (α) than vice versa. To this Wendt replies in his eighth edition, p. 294, by saying, “In all probability offence was taken at the representation of God himself as an object of τὸ ψηλαφᾶν.” Yes, there is a considerable difference between Hector alive and Hector dead, and of the latter it could be truly said (Iliad, xxii. 372 f.):
Ὧδε δέ τις εἴπεσκεν ἰδὼν ἐς πλησίον ἄλλον·
Ὢ πόποι ἦ μάλα δὴ μαλακώτερος ἀμφαφάασθαι.
But the θεῖον of which Paul speaks on the Areopagus is most assuredly no more and no less a noli me tangere than the θεός. Among the witnesses in support of τὸ θεῖον is Clement of Alexandria. I can only repeat what Zahn says: “Whoever is careful to bear in mind that our earliest manuscripts are some two hundred years later than Marcion, Tatian, and Irenæus, and has any sense of the difference between naïve originality and a regularity due to liturgical, dogmatic, and stylistic considerations,” cannot but judge differently with respect to β.
xviii. 3. See my article, “The Handicraft of St. Paul,” in the American Journal of Biblical Literature, xi. 2, 1892, on lorarius as the Syriac rendering of σκηνοποιός = ἱμαντοτόμος, σκυτοτόμος, leather-cutter, and the notes in the Expository Times for December 1896, and January and March 1897. Chrysostom calls Paul σκυτοτόμος, and in the Inventio Sanctae Crucis, it is said, “exercebat artem scaenographiam.” This last word I have explained as a confusion with σκηνορραφίαν, as Professor Ramsay also does. In the Compendious Syriac Dictionary of J. Payne Smith (which must not be confounded with the Thesaurus of her father), lorarius is explained as “a maker of rough cloth for tents or horse-cloths.” But there is nothing said about tents even by the Syriac scholiasts. The correct meaning will be found in Brockelmann. Celsus (Origen, Contra Celsum, vi. 33) speaks of ἐκεῖνος ἀπὸ κρημνοῦ ἐρριμμένος, ἢ εἰς βάραθρον ἐωσμένος, ἢ ἀγχόνῃ πεπνιγμένος, ἢ σκυτοτόμος, ἢ λιθοξόος, ἢ σιδηρεύς. Paul is evidently referred to after Judas Iscariot, but who are meant by λιθοξόος and σιδηρεύς?
xix. 6. I fail to understand how anyone can dismiss D here with the remark, “On account of Paul’s express declaration as to the desirability of the gift of tongues being supplemented by that of interpretation (1 Cor. xiv. 5, 13, 27), this addition seemed to be required in this case where Paul communicated the gifts of the Spirit” (Meyer-Wendt, eighth edition, p. 312).
xx. 4. For Δερβαῖος D* has Δουβεριος or Δουβριος, and g doverius. Moreover, D* has Βερυιαιος, not Βερυαιος, as Tischendorf has it. Valckenaer and Blass insert a comma after Γάϊος, and substitute δὲ for καὶ after Δερβαῖος, with the result that Gaius becomes a Thessalonian, and Timothy a Derbean. For this Zahn sees no necessity. See his Einleitung, i. 149.
xxviii. 16. On στρατοπεδάρχης (β) which Gigas renders princeps peregrinorum, see note on xxvii. 1, in Knowling’s Acts of the Apostles, Expositor’s Greek Testament, vol. ii. p. 516; article “Julius” in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, Ramsay in the Expositor, November 1900; Zahn, Einleitung, i. 389 f. Wendt (eighth edition, p. 420) omits the words in xxviii. 16, on the ground that their omission either by mistake or design is very unlikely, but their insertion, on the other hand, quite intelligible. This only shows how little reliance can be placed on subjective criticism.
We are not yet sufficiently well acquainted with the subscriptions of the minuscules, but it may be cited here that in one of them Luke is called συνέκδημος Παύλου, and in another θεηγόρος ὁ συγγράψας αὐτὰς ἐμπνεύσει θείᾳ.