Jim Oxford wrote:
>>There is a variant reading to Acts 8.27 in Codex Bezae (you will not find
>>this in the NA 27 apparatus) to the relative clause "who was over all 'her'
>>treasure."
>>Codex D attests hOS HN EPI PASHS THS GAZHS 'AUTOU.' What is the antecedent
>>of AUTOU?
Any one who tackles the book of Acts in Bezae deserves all the help he can
get! (My coded explanation of why I'm responding when I have no time at
all.)
Codex Bezae (MS. D) has many, many peculiarities, of which this is only a
minor example. May I quote James Hardy Ropes, one of those truly greats at
Harvard in its prime? (These words were published in the year I was born.)
In a number of cases (some being due to the contamination
of D from a non-western text) IMPOSSIBLE READINGS, [caps supplied]
mostly cases where the correction is not at first sight
evident, have been permitted to stand in the text, but with
an obelus ([dagger/obelus symbol]). The number of such obeli
might perhaps have been made greater with advantage.
[Page cccxi, from his edition of the text of Acts, which includes
in toto both Vaticanus and Bezae:
_The Beginnings of Christianity: Part I The Acts of the
Apostles, Volume III, The Text of Acts by James Hardy Ropes_]
The word AUTOU has an obelus on both sides of it (page 81). So Ropes
regarded this reading as "impossible." He couldn't find the antecedent
either, Jim!
Edward Hobbs